Hospital Security Award

sponsored by Nedap Security Management
The critical assets of a hospital - its people, property, information and reputation - must be protected.  This award will recognise hospitals that have made significant steps towards a safer environment for patients and workers through the implementation of a security policy which incorporates the latest advancements in CCTV, access control and other monitoring technologies.

2011 Winner

Derbyshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust
The security situation at Derbyshire Mental Health Services NHS Trust has improved dramatically in the past four years. A national scheme to increase security in hospitals led to the appointment of Shaun McCartney as a security management specialist. Across the 11 sites, a variety of 37 CCTV units and tannoy solutions were deployed. A total of 17 access control installations as well as 24 proximity readers, break glass and infrared detectors were introduced. This integrated system provided operators with a thorough overview of the entire site’s security and a quicker and more effective solution. Holding people to account has seen re-offending reduce , and helped to deliver a considerable drop in burglaries, violence against staff and  incidents of theft at the trust.

Commended

Heart of England NHS Foundation Trust
In addition to manned guarding, the Trust has invested in CCTV equipment, runs police surgeries and a Hospital Watch scheme. The focus is to raise awareness of security. This was put to the test earlier this year. Security guards Mazar Akram, Ibrahim Bilow and Peter Luckman jumped into action when they spotted a gang of men running to a car with a baby at Heartlands Hospital. A tag on the baby boy’s leg sounded off alarms as he was swept out of the maternity unit and a series of doors that should have slammed shut and locked were blocked by men involved in the scheme. Despite the men making a getaway after hitting one of the guards over the hand with a metal bar, the security team passed on the licence plate number to police who recovered the baby.

West Suffolk Hospital NHS Trust
Set in a 19-hectare parkland site on the edge of Bury St Edmunds, the West Suffolk Hospital NHS Trust, which has approximately 480 beds, serves an area with a population of around 275,000.  The hospital commissioned an update of its CCTV and access crontrol after 77 thefts were reported on its grounds last year. Existing analogue cameras were not sufficient to cover all areas of the hospital buildings and grounds, with thefts reported at a variety of locations throughout the hospital including the A&E department, wards and car park.  As part of the upgrade, the storage capacity within the existing digital video recorders was increased, as well as the IP video licenses for each of the three machines so that they could accommodate the 27 additional network attached cameras.

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2010 Winner

Peterborough and Stamford NHS Trust - Lone worker protection system
With incidents of violence and aggression on the rise towards members of NHS staff, Peterborough and Stamford Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust decided to evaluate what measures could be taken to add to the protection of staff who had been assessed as being at high risk of attack whilst on duty both within the hospital campus and the wider community. The Trust conducted a trial involving a small number of staff before purchasing protection units for all its lone workers. This generated positive feedback and identified that they felt far more comfortable with a solution where their movements were monitored by an external organisation. Managers can access the secure web based software platform at any time to instantly update staff details or change the speed-dial programming of individual units. Utilising GPS based technology which interacts with alarm receiving software, the system lets employers know exactly where their lone workers are whenever they need assistance.

Commended:
Southend University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust - CCTV installation
As the hospital is in operation 24/7, 365 days a year, there are always people on site so the Trust looks at CCTV in a totally different way to most commercial enterprises. Rather than being installed for the protection of property, its primary focus was on the protection of people and includes surveillance across the full perimeter, all entry and exit points for both vehicle and foot traffic, as well as key transit points to ensure their safety and well being. With a 25 strong site security team, the CCTV also needed to be easily accessible and able to deliver evidential quality images. Integrated sitemaps can instantly pull up all cameras in an incident area at the touch of a button. Footage is stored in a tamper proof NAS storage cluster and can be quickly searched and copied onto removable media for use by the police if needed.

Ashford and St Peter's Hospitals NHS Trust - Council Controlled CCTV system
The new CCTV recording system is an extension of Runntmede Borough Council’s CCTV network that monitors video from more than 200 cameras. Working closely with installation partners, codec’s were installed to encode video from more than 64 analogue cameras situated around the hospital sites. The video is digitally recorded locally at the Hospitals with a connection to the control centre so that operators and police can review archived video from any seven cameras at a time. The hospitals have saved costs by retaining investment in their existing cameras.