Pennsylvania medical center upgrades to one-card system

Aug 1, 2000 12:00 PM, ACCESS CONTROL & SECURITY SYSTEMS INTEGRATION STAFF

Until recently, staff members of Pennsylvania's Crozer-Keystone Health System carried up to three access cards to enter the hospitals, labs, administrative buildings and the parking garages where they worked.

Crozer-Keystone, located just outside Philadelphia, had installed three different access systems over the years, each requiring its own card. Late last year, as part of a Y2K upgrade, Crozer-Keystone security officials decided to go with one system.

"We wanted a one-card system that allows staff and employees to interface with access control and parking management," says Bob Walker, director of security for Crozer-Keystone. "And we wanted our employees to use only one card anywhere in our system."

The security system spans eight locations, separated by up to 15 miles. Five of the buildings are major medical centers. The others include a large warehouse, a technology center and the corporate center for the Crozer-Keystone Health System.

>From its inception in 1990, Crozer-Keystone Health System has been the >dominant provider of health care in Delaware County, Pa., northern >Delaware, and part of western New Jersey. The area's population is one >million people. The consortium was formed in 1990 by Delaware County >Memorial Hospital, Springfield Hospital, and Crozer-Chester Medical >Center. Sacred Heart Hospital joined in 1992 and was renamed Community >Hospital. In 1996 the Springfield Hospital location expanded with the >addition of the Healthplex Campus, a comprehensive health, wellness and >fitness facility. The system's newest member, Taylor Hospital, joined the >system in 1997.

The main facility, Crozer-Chester, includes 25 buildings and houses the main security office. About 50 buildings systemwide have access control. There are four major parking garages and surface parking which accommodate 4,000 employees and visitors.

More than 1,100 physicians and 6,000 employees provide a full spectrum of wellness, prevention, acute and long-term care, rehabilitation and restorative care to the community. All employees carry an access card that doubles as a photo identification badge. The card provides the capability to access authorized areas at all locations including the parking facilities.

Employees are only given access to required work areas. Most badges grant access privileges one hour before and one hour after employees' official work schedules. A badge is disabled as soon as an employee leaves the system or is terminated. Walker and his operations manager are the only employees authorized to delete an employee record from the system. Bar codes have also been added to the access cards of nurses to allow them access to drug dispensing machines. Bar codes can also be added for employees wanting to access a sports health facility at the Springfield Hospital.

"We keep the badges on record for three years after an employee leaves," Walker says. "We want to keep the photos in the system just in case something occurs that we want to go back and review."

The security department is responsible for the video imaging and administration of the badges. The badges are printed on Fargo printers. At the time the badges are made, a new employee's signature is also stored in his or her file in the system. Walker has two full-time employees dedicated to the badging program. With employee turnover and the need for temporary access, the department makes up to 8,000 badges annually. Local police and firefighters have also been issued badges so they may enter the hospital at any time in an emergency.

Each time a card is used anywhere in the system, the time, date and location are recorded in a journal in the access system's computer.

The backbone of the $1 million access control system is the Software House C*CURE 800 system from Sensormatic Electronics Corp., Boca Raton, Fla. About 200 proximity readers, manufactured by HID, are installed at critical access points throughout the Crozer-Keystone system. Access information is transmitted to the main security office via a combination of fiber cable, copper telephone lines and Crozer-Keystone Ethernet. There are command centers at each major facility to handle security and assist visitors and employees with access problems. In an emergency, the entire system can be controlled from any command center.

Currently, no patients are tagged for their protection, but hospital officials are considering protection tagging in certain areas. Certain patient areas, such as the intensive care unit, pediatrics, maternity and the psychiatric center, require an access card for entry at all times.

Walker says it is difficult to keep intruders out of a hospital, which is a public place. The system automatically opens public doors at 6 a.m. each day and locks them at the end of visiting hours at 8:30 p.m. Despite this, Walker says Crozer-Chester was having problems with homeless people gaining access to the hospital to find a place to sleep each night. They were entering through the emergency room.

"On more than one occasion we found people sleeping in areas where they should not be," he says. "So we added access control readers to limit who enters the emergency room. We also added motion sensors and surveillance cameras. Now it is almost impossible to breach that system because of the layers of security."

Walker says aesthetics were an important consideration in the planning and design of the system, which was completed by Security Services and Technologies (SST), a Philadelphia area-based systems integrator. In the corporate center, where senior executives work, SST installed a long-range reader in the ceiling of the three-story entry to keep an unobstructed view of the glass-enclosed entry.

"To the average employee and visitor, our security system is almost invisible," Walker says. "It was designed so you don't see much equipment. The employees have been very supportive of the system knowing that it increases their safety."

A major challenge in changing from three to one access system was making certain there was no down time. SST's Tom Catagnus says company employees did all of the system programming beforehand at each medical center. New firmware was installed into Sensormatic's apCs (advanced processing controller). Each of the apC access panels can control up to eight doors. The host computer downloads information into each panel's memory. That way, if the host were to fail, the system would still function to limit access to unauthorized personnel.

"Although the entire process of changing over to one system took a number of days, no one building or parking garage was ever left without security," Catagnus says.

The security department also maintains an extensive video surveillance system. Walker says his officers are able to view about 95 percent of the external perimeter and parking areas of the various buildings with the cameras. There are a total of 100 cameras from Panasonic and Philips (formerly Burle) in the system. All cameras are monitored and recorded 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The staff at the main security office monitors all the cameras. Walker says his department is planning to integrate control of the cameras into the C*CURE 800 system.

Within the next year, Walker says, Crozer-Chester will add a new four-story cancer center and a new parking garage to the security system. The security equipment in the hospital's emergency room will also be renovated and augmented.

"I can categorically state that the security system has been a tremendous asset to the control of our environment," he says. "It has given us the flexibility to control situations as they present themselves."

Want to use this article? Click here for options!
© 2008 Penton Media Inc.

This month in Access Control

• Opening Up About Door Closers
• An Enterprise Approach
• The Framework For Open Systems
• On A Higher Plane
• More from April's issue