FALL 2011 Newsletter
No Excuses, Just Solutions
Improving Security at Boone Hospital Center
Situated just off I-70 in Columbia, Missouri, Boone Hospital Center is a 400-bed facility staffed by more than 2,000 employees and 350 physicians. Because of its location between Kansas City and St. Louis, the hospital sees a high number of travellers and transients who pass through the community. Couple that with the more than 30,000 students attending the University of Missouri and one starts to see the kind of security challenges that the hospital’s security personnel have to contend with.
“ I always tell people that Columbia is not the sleepy little farm town it used to be,” says Security Services Director Rob Loseman. “Many of the crimes that happen in and around our hospital aren’t necessarily committed by residents of our community; they’re transient, involving people passing through. Plus, our facility sits in the East Campus neighborhood by the university, so there’s a level of crime that’s inherent to having such a large student population nearby. And then there are the kinds of offenses that are typically associated with hospitals: thefts, acts of violence, domestic abuse cases. We generally stay on top of all of it by maintaining a presence and conducting frequent patrols of the premises. However, in order to be truly effective, we need to have comprehensive security systems in place.”
That’s where Will Electronics comes in.
“One of the first projects I was involved with was an upgrade to our CCTV system,” Rob recalled. “Will Electronics had been hired by my predecessor to manage the job, and their technicians were in the process of completely redoing the entire platform for the monitoring station. The old setup had all of the DVR hardware and equipment sitting right next to the officer manning the station, so it was hot, noisy and cramped. I could tell that my people weren’t happy when they were on duty in there.”
“With Will Electronics’ help, we set up a separate data room to house the equipment and completely upgraded the monitor array. The new station not only features more advanced monitoring technology, it’s also a more comfortable and efficient setup for the officers on duty. We also increased the camera count to over 300, increasing our coverage of the hospital and grounds. We’re also expanding our parking structure, and the new system is easily expandible for the cameras that will be installed there.”
The new CCTV system brought a host of improvements: better resolution and image detail, remote accessibility. However, Rob soon discovered other advantages to having the new system, particularly when it came to addressing lawsuits brought against the hospital.
“The risk management personnel love us because we always have documentation footage. Say someone files a claim that they suffered an injury because they slipped and fell in a hallway. Officer logs will record ‘Officer responded to a fall incident.’ They spell it all out in a clear report, then include ‘See CCTV footage’ with a reference number. We package it all up and send it to Risk Management. They have it all there so that, when the lawyer comes a-knockin’ we can say, ‘Here’s the report from security, and here’s the report from customer relations and safety, and here’s the camera footage – here’s where your client says they fell, and here’s the footage showing them going down on one knee and then gently lying down on the ground.’”
“You wouldn’t believe how much support we’ve gotten from our Capitol Committee for getting more hardware and system upgrades. They approve our projects pretty readily because, despite the costs, they know that we’re saving them money on the back end,” said Rob.
Another challenge Rob needed help resolving was the hospital’s antiquated access control system. “We were running three separate access systems – an online system, an offline system, and our regular hardware locks. The offline locks were causing us all kinds of problems. There were four different generations in use, and each had its own means for updating them. Some were battery-operated, keypad-style locks that were reprogrammed by manually entering one or more sequences of numbers. Others had to be reprogrammed with a PDA or laptop. It was just a labor nightmare.”
“I approached Will Electronics and said, ‘I want to get rid of these things and replace them all with a single, state-of-the-art online access system.’ Now we’ve got a single platform running an online system that has reporting capabilities, they can be operated from satellite locations in the event of an emergency, we can do scheduling - there’s just an amazing capacity for managing the system that we never had before.”
Rob says he's been impressed not only by the skill and efficiency of Will Electronics' technicians, but also by their expertise. “We know what we want, but we don’t always know what it’s going to take to get us there,” says Rob. “With our prior vendor, the customer service just wasn’t there. With Will Electronics, I could say, ‘We want to do this,’ and they’d come back and say, ‘We could do that, but there’s a better way.’ On some occasions they’ve even told me when there’s an easier, less expensive way to accomplish what I want. They could have just gone along with my idea and billed me accordingly, but that’s not what they’re about. Every step of the way, they’re willing to work with us; they make sure that what we get in the end is exactly what we want.”
“Will Electronics has always met the goals that we’ve put forward to them. Every project, from minor repairs to major improvements, has always been handled in the same manner: with good customer service and respect. We have a mutual professionalism and we’re good partners - and I think we will remain that way moving forward.”
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Boone Hospital Center has over 300 security cameras on property
Rob Loseman - Security Services Director in 24-hr Surveillance Control Room
Boone Hospital Parking Garage