Hospital Security and Your Baby

• By Ralph C. Jensen
• May 30, 2007

NOTHING brings a parent to their knees quicker than worry over their child’s safety and security. I’m sure my parents worried over my growth, and as a parent, I worry constantly about my sons—even though they are grown and away from home.

You worry about your children, and we’ve all witnessed the horrendous tragedies where young adults and children have been subjected to terror and insecurity in what are supposed to be the safest places in the world—our schools.

Places of education and personal growth, schools should be safe and secure from the callous selfishness of a student-gone-mad with a gun. Along with schools, your local hospital should be as safe and secure as any facility on Earth.

In early March, a newborn baby when it was abducted from a West Texas hospital nursery. Sounds pretty simple, doesn’t it? The infant was taken from Covenant Lakeside Hospital in Lubbock by a woman posing as a medial worker. The abductor walked out of the facility with the 5-pound baby hidden in her purse.

The abductor had gained the trust of the baby’s mother by posing as a medical worker. She had gone into the mother’s room several times before the baby was taken, telling her the infant needed tests.

Thank goodness for video surveillance. Hospital surveillance footage showed a woman wearing blue and flower-print hospital scrubs and a grey, puffy hooded jacket walking out of the hospital at about 1:20 a.m. Saturday. The baby was found the next day, about 100 miles west in Clovis, N.M.

According to the International Association for Health Care Security and Safety, preventative measures to protect infants in hospitals can either be low- or high-tech—ranging from the use of passwords and color-coded ID badges to electronic monitoring bracelets.

One thing is for certain, an effective type of security must be in place. Since 1983, California and Texas have experienced 33 infant abductions, Florida is third with 18; Illinois, 14; New York and Ohio, 10 each; Georgia and Maryland have encountered nine each.

Baby snatching seems to be big business, and maternity wards nationwide are seeing the effects. Hospital security experts confirm any abduction gives enough pretext to re-examine already implemented high-tech security measures to find gaps a kidnapper could exploit.

Hospital security experts take the Lubbock incident into account and are hoping it will help them gain a better understanding of preventative policies.

“Do we study this incident to see if there is something we can do to incorporate into our system? Oh yeah,” said Gary Taylor, crime prevention manager at Parkland Hospital in Dallas. “We’d be remiss if we didn’t.”

Of course, there’s no cookie-cutter approach, and few hospital rely on a single security device. In fact, many hospitals employ a three-tier system of physical security, well-rehearsed protocols and, most importantly, patient and staff education.

Newborns don some of the smartest high-tech devices as soon as they are born. Hospitals attach electronic surveillance bracelets to the ankles of newborns. It works just like an electronic tag on an article of clothing at a department store. Walk through the door, and an alarm sounds if it’s not removed. The bracelet works nearly the same way, except at a hospital, a door also might automatically close and lock.

According to Taylor, the latest technology is known as cut-band technology. If someone tries to cut an electronic tracker from an infant, an alarm sounds, doors lock and the maternity ward is locked down. The down side is devices do not include GPS and are useless outside the hospital.

The baby taken from the Lubbock hospital had a monitoring band on her ankle, and hospital officials insist the facility’s security systems did not malfunction, but also declined to say how the abductor beat the system.

The bottom line is establishing protocols should be a priority, according to Taylor. Parkland is a busy hospital with about 16,000 births each year. Security officials conduct surprise drills simulating a baby abduction. Drills are named Code Pink.

Other hospitals in the Dallas area use techniques such as passwords. Mothers are given the password and are instructed not to give any hospital workers their baby unless a password is given. That password changes several times a day.

In Houston, at Methodist Hospital, healthcare workers put a security tag around the ankle of a newborn. Mothers are instructed to hand her baby only to workers with a certain symbol on their badges.

In Jonesboro, Ark., at St. Bernards and NEA Medical Center, babies are always taken to and from the parents’ room by bassinet. The parents are instructed that unless the person has a specialized ID tag with a certain color, they are not to give their baby to them. In addition, the labor and delivery floor is on the top level of the hospital, and anyone who enters the floor has to be let in a locked door. The nursery also uses a card system that has information only the nurses and parents know, and parents are encouraged to question anyone who enters their room.

Perhaps the most precious patient in any hospital is the newborn, or an infant, and abduction of a child is a rather unusual crime, but it happens. However, the problem is it’s so sensational that anything else that happens in the hospital pales in comparison. At a hospital, you’re under the impression you and your baby are safe and secure. Security should be paramount. Let’s keep it that way.