The Importance of Visitor Management in Healthcare 

Large healthcare facilities have multiple concerns, but patient health and satisfaction reign supreme in the hierarchy of priorities. The COVID-19 pandemic created a new set of challenges that put the success of these two priorities at risk. Now more than ever, the healthcare industry must find ways to help ensure the health, safety, and security of its people, and visitor management technology can play a critical role in that.

Healthcare Facilities: From Welcoming to Wary Environment

The pandemic transformed what was once an open, welcoming environment to a closed, more cautious space for patient care. Hospital administrators were more wary of who was entering their facility, and if they were spreading disease or putting patients and staff at risk in other ways. As we move forward, evaluations are being done on which pandemic-era policies should remain in place and if there are easier ways to enforce these policies without adding extra burdens to the already overworked staff.

How Visitor Management Can Help Ensure a Better Experience

Managing your visitors is part of a strategy that healthcare facilities cannot only continue to monitor who is in your facility, but to provide an efficient process for visitors to adhere to policies that are set in place.  

A hospital might have as many as 10 exterior entry points that an individual could use to access areas of the hospital. Controlling access to these is the first step, but these are just some of the questions that come next about who is entering the threshold: 

• Is the visitor there to see a patient?  

• Does the patient want to see this visitor?  

• Is the visitor in an infectious state?  

• Is the person visiting a staff member, and does the staff member want them there?  

The questions about each visitor are endless, but they are all important.  

Help Create a Safer and More Secure Healthcare Environment 

Knowing why somebody is in your facility and where they are is important. Workplace violence is a concern for every business, but it has been especially prevalent over the last few years as nurses and doctors are left to enforce unpopular policies amongst visitors and patients.  

Traditional hospital security can often be stretched thin, which can result in a more reactive rather than proactive security stance. The concerns over staff safety in this environment have not only given administrators reason for safety concerns, but can put undue pressure on medical professionals. 

How Visitor Management Can Help Solve These Pain Points 

Technology can help navigate these pressures with visitor management. The right system can help control visitor flow when coupled with the right policies and staff to enforce them. Here’s a checklist of how to manage your visitors:  

• Limit your visitor access points by locking down doors that are strictly for staff.  

• Monitor your visitor entrance points with kiosks or a manual check-in where IDs can be verified and the visitor can state why they are in the hospital.  

• Enforce restraining orders or visitor preferences by flagging in the system who is allowed onsite.

Visitor Management: Part of Your Patient Care

Security technology, such as visitor management solutions, can help family and friends rest easy that their loved ones are being treated in a more secure environment. Visitors can have a better experience with a more seamless experience entering your healthcare facility, and your system administrators can optimize operations by utilizing a single platform.  All of this means creating an environment where healthcare professionals can keep their focus where it should be: their patients.  

We're here to help

Visitor Management is part of the Workplace Management solution [powered by CloudGate] and offers a flexible and integrated workplace management system (IWMS) that efficiently manages your space and automates your security, safety, compliance, and health processes.   

Let us help you operate more efficiently, reduce liability and risk, and foster a safe and healthy environment for employees, contractors, and visitors.

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