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How to safely allow visitors to your hospital in a COVID-exposed world (second of a seven-part series)

by Andrew Jones

Now, more than ever, you must know who is in your building. This requires signing in, identifying, and tracking your visitors.

How to know who has permission to be in your hospital.

When was the last time you saw a healthcare worker who wasn’t wearing some form of identification? More than other institutions, hospitals have vulnerable occupants who need to know the people in charge of their care have authorized access to their bedside. A presumption of safety is critical to effective patient care. Hospitals always badge their staff, so why not all the other people they let through their doors, like visitors, vendors, and outpatients?

More important than the badge a visitor wears is what it says about them:

• I am who I say I am – today.
• I signed in at the front desk – today.
• I have permission to be here – today.

Without proof of the above three assertions on their chest, visitors may as well be allowed into your hospital wearing someone else’s badge – or no badge at all.

Verification comes in two ways:

1. Requiring visitors to show their driver’s license (or some other government-issued I.D.) before getting a badge.

2. Making it obvious that a visitor badge is valid by some visual cue or alert. A photo helps. So does a readable date. Even better is a badge that has time sensitivity built in, so you can tell when it has expired.

Once you issue a badge to a visitor, your system needs to be able to tell you where they are going, where they should be, and – after they depart – where they were (and when). This helps you in case there’s ever an incident or even if you just want to know visitor volume trends for staffing purposes. Now, of course, another reason is contact tracing for COVID-19.

(Next: Part Three — How to manage your visitors. Download our complete guide to safely allowing visitors.)

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Posted on 7/10/2020