Healthcare on Guard
Open platform manages enterprise-wide security operations
- By Joe Kirmser
- Jun 01, 2013
As the largest healthcare provider in the Twin Cities’ East Metro
area, HealthEast Care System is dedicated to offering its patients
the highest quality medical services. From prevention to cure,
HealthEast meets the needs of the Minnesota community it serves
with a blend of traditional medicine and integrative therapies.
Critical to meeting these needs is creating a safe and secure healthcare environment
for its patients and staff.
Lenel’s OnGuard platform is providing HealthEast with a comprehensive solution
to effectively manage its security operations across three acute-care hospitals,
a long-term care facility, and 13 primary and specialty-care clinics. From access
control to video, identity credentialing to visitor management, OnGuard enables
HealthEast to take control of its security needs enterprise-wide.
“When I came here almost three years ago, the security system that was being
used was very old, outdated, not well maintained and needed some pretty major updates,” said Mark Johnson, security director for
HealthEast. “We needed a modern, state-of-the-art
system to match our new state-of-the-art ER at St.
Joseph’s Hospital, located in downtown St. Paul.”
To test the OnGuard security platform’s value
and performance HealthEast conducted a pilot of
the system at St. Joseph’s Hospital, which boasted a
newly re-designed emergency department with 23 new
rooms: six for resuscitation, 14 “universal” examination
rooms and three for triage or minor treatments.
The “racetrack” design of the new ER served as
an optimized space for patients and their families, as
well as for care providers. However, it also had some
security challenges that required a robust and versatile
system platform.
“We did a test of OnGuard in a brand new ER
environment that was security sensitive, with a potentially
high-risk population coming into the ER,”
Johnson said. “We trialed the system for nearly a year
and after that, the decision was made that new and
future installations will be on the Lenel platform.”
System-wide integration of OnGuard is occurring
across the enterprise, switching all HealthEast hospitals
and clinics.
“We needed to be able to control our facilities remotely,
if need be, and lock down and open at a moment’s
notice,” Johnson said. ”One of the first large
projects for us besides the ER at St. Joseph’s Hospital
was converting our Bethesda campus to a 100 percent
Lenel access control facility to help give us that important
capability.
“There’s a lot more integration that we’re looking
to do with our fire and elevator systems, including
Active Directory for security and integration into our
HRIS database.”
Open Platform, Open Future
Throughout its hospitals, clinics and outpatient services,
HealthEast is dedicated to offering new technologies
and is focused on its future of community
service. For security, the open architecture design allows
HealthEast to take advantage of the newest and
best-of-breed hardware and software technologies,
giving the healthcare provider the freedom to integrate
cutting-edge, third-party products.
HealthEast required a reliable and efficient total
security platform to minimize costs and integrate the
solution into its existing infrastructure. By leveraging
current and future technology investments, the open
architecture design has improved the not-for-profit
organization’s security enterprise.
“At St. Joseph’s Hospital, we’re replacing nearly
a dozen elevators,” Johnson said. “We’re addressing
not just security issues, but also other problems within
our facility, which is also a huge cost savings.”
The possibilities are endless for HealthEast to integrate
human resource databases, fire and intrusion
detection systems, identity solutions, elevator systems
and logical access control systems. All of these
system interfaces are seamlessly integrated using a
single database server and a single user interface for
all applications.
“We are looking at integrating the fire system in
through Lenel, so our stationed officer, who monitors
those alarms, can respond to a life-safety-event fire
alarm or smoke detector,” Johnson said. “With a full
implementation, we will be going into the active directory
account system and the HRIS databases. We’re
also looking at moving in the elevator module, as well
as ID credentialing.”
OnGuard VideoManager
HealthEast now has a wide range of choices for implementing
advanced video solutions. OnGuard VideoManager
provides the hospitals and clinics with
complete control over all video operations within a
seamlessly integrated system.
St Joseph’s Hospital has switched about 40 percent
of its access control and a third of its video operations,
with more to follow. So far, a total of 245 cameras
have been converted.
Combined with Lenel or third-party cameras,
OnGuard ensures HealthEast has unlimited possibilities
for designing hardware and software video
solutions with total integration to meet the unique
security needs of individual hospitals and clinics in
its care system.
“The benefit is right there in cost savings. It’s also
the flexibility and choice when it comes to third-party
hardware integration,” Johnson said. “If I want
(brand A) camera, I can integrate (brand A) camera.
If I want (brand B) camera, I can integrate (brand B)
camera. Everyone can determine what is best for their
facility. That is what Lenel brings to the table versus a
lot of other manufacturers that pigeon hole you into
a certain brand that you must use, whether that is an
NVR, card reader or camera system.”
Integration with alarm monitoring, access control
and other systems enable HealthEast security
staff to implement video auditing capabilities, track
suspicious behavior, and automate response processes
to safety events. OnGuard provides the organization
with a single application to monitor all forms
of business, building, asset and security alarm and
event activity.
“Facilities management now has access to all of
our outdoor cameras, so when it snows they can pull
up on their iPad or iPhone and see what area needs to
be shoveled versus running around an eight-squareblock
campus to figure out what areas are most severely
impacted by the snow and ice,” Johnson said.
“Our nursing staff also uses the system to see who is
out in the waiting rooms, and housekeeping uses it to
keep the areas clean. It’s not just for security, but for
the entire HealthEast care system.”
Secure And Reliable
Among its most recent achievements,
HealthEast became the first Twin Cities
hospital system to receive Level
III trauma designation at all of its
full-service, acute-care hospitals: St.
John’s Hospital, St. Joseph’s Hospital
and Woodwinds Health Campus. This
prestigious designation culminated a
process to become part of Minnesota’s
statewide trauma system. As a result,
HealthEast’s hospitals are receiving facilities
for any FEMA, HHS or natural
disaster events in the area.
Reliability and continuity of operation
was also an important factor in
HealthEast selecting the OnGuard solution
from Lenel. In the healthcare environment,
a security system that fails
even for a few minutes due to downtime
can have disastrous consequences.
With fault tolerant servers, all of
HealthEast’s critical server components
have backups. If a component fails, the
backups kick-in real time, avoiding system
shutdown. In addition, multiple
servers in a separate off-site HealthEast
datacenter serve as backup systems for
disaster recovery.
“We are moving this to a virtual
server, which will give us more flexibility
in a disaster recovery scenario,”
said Johnson. “Using Lenel in a virtual
environment gives us that flexibility to
work at anytime, anywhere, any place.”
HIPAA privacy rules provide federal
protections for personal health
information and give patients an array
of rights with respect to that information.
These rules specify a series of
administrative, physical and technical
safeguards to assure the confidentiality,
integrity and availability of electronic
protected health information.
Given the importance of HIPAA
compliance for HealthEast, it was vital
that OnGuard provide a significant
measure of security.
This article originally appeared in the June 2013 issue of Security Today.