Seeing Through Rose-colored Passes
Expiring visitor ID program helps Swedish Covenant Hospital keep patients safe
- By Debbie Bolles
- Aug 01, 2008
Tracking more than 300,000 admissions,
outpatient visits and emergency
room visits—not to mention
an unknown number of vendor and
family member visits per year at Swedish
Covenant Hospital—proved a challenge
from a security standpoint for this seven-building
campus.
That’s why the Chicago hospital
turned to an expiring identification badge
solution from ProForm Technologies to
monitor visitors and keep patients safe.
“When a patient comes into our hospital,
they are putting their life in our hands
and we want to do everything we can to
protect them,” said Dorothy Pravdik,
manager of lobby services at Swedish
Covenant Hospital, a full-service medical
facility operated by Evangelical
Covenant Church. “The concern is always
to maintain the safety of our patients. The
world isn’t the same as it was 10 years
ago. We as a society have become more
aware of the necessity of security in all
areas of our life.”
In the five years that Swedish
Covenant Hospital has been using one-day
expiring ID badges, no patient safety
incidents related to unauthorized visitors
have occurred. Since the badges turn a
bright pink color 24 hours after activation,
staff easily can pinpoint and stop
anyone with an expired badge.
“It’s important for us to be able to
screen everybody that comes in the door
on a daily basis so we can continue to
provide a healing environment for our
patients, visitors and staff,” Pravdik said.
A Messy Paper Trail
Swedish Covenant Hospital had always
kept track of its visitors. But before using
expiring badges, the hospital relied on
paper stick-on IDs that could be reused,
lost, stolen or copied. This presented serious
liability issues and an ineffective
monitoring solution.
“The problem with labels is people
would walk out and take them off and the
labels would end up on light poles,” said
Kerry Nemec, account manager with
ProForm Technologies Inc., a Chicago-based
distributor of TEMPbadge ID
products. Nemec sold the expiring badge
program to the hospital and helped
implement it.
Pravdik said the hospital has used different
methods to monitor visitors
throughout its more than 120-year history,
most recently using disposable pieces
of paper.
“There was no way to tell who
belonged in the facility or who didn’t,” she
said. “But since we were passing out paper
passes, it wasn’t that difficult for us to convert
over to the expiring badge system.”
Tickled Pink
Within a week of purchasing the
TEMPbadge ID badges, hospital and
security staff could easily track visitors
and vendors. Swedish Covenent Hospital
opted for a three-color badging system:
blue for outpatients and visitors, yellow
for vendors and red for a visitor or patient
entering the emergency room.
At each of four hospital entrances,
individuals are required to check in and
state the purpose of the visit. The appropriate
colored clip-on badge is then
issued for each visitor. The sticky label
affixed to the badge back activates time-sensitive
technology to expire and turn
the badge pink within 24 hours. The date,
visitor’s name and destination are written
on the badge by hospital staff processing
the visitor entry.
Nemec estimates Swedish Covenant
Hospital uses 3,000 to 4,000 expiring
badges per week. The expiring badges,
preprinted with the hospital’s name and
logo, are easy to assemble by staff members
when a visitor checks in.
“After 24 hours, the bad ge develops
bright pink stripes, informing us that the
visitor was here from the day before and
had not checked in that day,” Pravdik
said, adding that hospital administrators
are extremely pleased with the program.
The badge is then dropped off at the
front desk before the visitor leaves. But
even if the person forgets to do that, and
tries to reuse the badge later, the expiration
feature alerts staff that the visitor has not
checked in properly.
“Going down the halls, if we see
someone without a badge we are able to
stop them and see if there’s anything we
can help with,” Pravdik said. “It goes
back to the concept of making sure that
the people who are here at the hospital
belong here and have a sense of security.”
Added Benefits
Besides keeping hospital patients safe by
helping to ensure non-patients, visitors
and vendors stay out, the expiring ID
badge program also decreases unnecessary
visitor traffic.
“We had some issues with our vendors
coming into our hospital and wandering
around and doing surprise visits,”
Pravdik said.
The vendor badge color makes it easier
for staff to track the movement of these visitors
and ensure they are escorted to their
location per hospital policy. Pravdik said
the color coding allows staff to point these
visitors in the right direction if needed.
And because the badges are a clip-on
type, they are less likely to accidentally
fall off and get lost as paper label badges
can, a feature that Pravdik likes.
“They love the product,” Nemec
said. “The color coding is a big thing
making it easy to identify the type of
visitor. ... It’s more and more important
today for patient safety to monitor people’s
access to the hospital. Patient safety
and security are
always key.”