Brivo Access Control Provides Management For More Than 200 Doors At Five Texas Hospital Campuses

  • Jul 08, 2010

Brivo Systems recently announced that CHRISTUS Santa Rosa Health System relies on Brivo OnSite SE/XE access control for improved security at five of its hospital campuses spread throughout South-Central Texas. INET Security and Surveillance is the integrator for the project implementation.

CHRISTUS Santa Rosa Health System, a faith-based, not-for-profit health system, and a part of CHRISTUS Health, is comprised of more than 40 hospitals, inpatient, and long-term care facilities as well as dozens of clinics, physician offices, and health care services in more than 70 cities in Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Utah and Mexico.

To date, the Brivo OnSite solution has been installed in the downtown San Antonio CHRISTUS Santa Rosa Hospital -- City Centre, CHRISTUS Santa Rosa Children’s Hospital, CHRISTUS Santa Rosa Hospital -- Westover Hills, CHRISTUS Santa Rosa Hospital -- Medical Center, and CHRISTUS Santa Rosa Hospital -- New Braunfels. The five hospitals combined have a total of 1,128 beds, nearly 3,900 Associates, and 2,000 physicians. The Brivo system manages approximately 210 doors spread among the five hospital campuses.

Previously, CHRISTUS Santa Rosa Health System used another well-known access control system however, “…the features were limited and offered little integration potential,” recounted Mark Hart, CHRISTUS Santa Rosa Health System director of security and environmental safety.

Hart, a seasoned professional, had a quality working relationship with Steven Ballard of INET, and called him in for a consultation on upgrading CHRISTUS Santa Rosa Health System’s access technology. Ballard provided Hart with a demo of the Brivo technology and, according to Hart, “We did our due diligence, initiated our contract with Brivo, and have been pleased with all levels of service.”

The initial installation was at the newest hospital campus, CHRISTUS Santa Rosa Hospital - Westover Hills, where the system’s servers are located. CHRISTUS Santa Rosa Health System and INET then proceeded to roll out the Brivo system to the other hospital campuses.

“We did not want to manage two different access control databases,” Hart said. “We were able to move from our successful installation at CHRISTUS Santa Rosa Hospital -- Westover Hills to the other targeted facilities by selling management a plan that enabled us to keep all data and all access management under the one Brivo system, operated with a single Graphical User Interface.”

The on-going installation requires an extraordinary amount of coordination with the multiple departments involved and the different security and access needs of each department. The Brivo system provides CHRISTUS Santa Rosa Health System with the flexibility and level of control required to manage the multiple needs of all the departments served and to organize the nearly 9,000 users into an impressive 127 groups -- all with different privileges in terms of locations, days, and time periods of access.

“We are very pleased with the Brivo software and our system administrators have been impressed,” Hart said.

The system’s ability to handle CHRISTUS Santa Rosa Health System’s complex, layered needs, coupled with system performance to date have Hart and his team looking to Brivo for the anticipated expansion of access control throughout the extensive CHRISTUS Santa Rosa Health System network of hospitals, clinics and other facilities.

In addition, Hart and Ballard have been heavily involved in the on-going STRAC (Southwest Texas Regional Advisory Council) Version 2 access control system upgrade. This Version 2 Universal ID Card is a credit card-sized FIPS-201-compliant (PIV-Interoperable) smart card. It stores the physician’s personal digital identity and can only be accessed by the physician.

The card is useful to physicians who visit many different locations such as hospitals, pharmacies, labs, designated physician parking areas, secure locations in certain buildings, and their own offices. Many of these access points require an ID card for access. The STRAC Universal ID card consolidates all of a physician’s separate digital identities onto one card. This card also provides physicians the ability to use the proxy/chip portion of their Version 2 badge for convenient access at all CHRISTUS Santa Rosa Health System facilities.

Planning is currently under way to create a database for Brivo to automatically process authenticated Version 2 badges in a database file known as C.R.U.D. (Create, Revise, Update, and Delete).

“This ambitious project is an impressive model to benefit CHRISTUS Santa Rosa Health System as we continue to stay in the forefront of the STRAC unified badge initiative. Right now, we are the only health system in San Antonio where physicians can use the proxy/chip security feature on their STRAC Version 2 ID,” Hart said.

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