Streamlining healthcare safety: modern visitor management solutions

Modern healthcare safety challenges

The need for effective visitor management has never been more crucial in healthcare environments. As healthcare facilities strive to provide quality care while ensuring patient safety and security, visitor management systems have become essential in streamlining health and safety processes. 

With regulations and government guidance changing regularly, it’s critical that processes for health and safety in healthcare organisations are seamless and easy to follow for everyone.

However, it’s not without its challenges. Visitor management should balance efficiency with security, capturing all necessary information in a timely manner without compromising data privacy. Systems need to comply with privacy and other regulations, and should integrate with other systems seamlessly.

A modern, digital visitor management system (VMS) can help with this.

Core safety components

There are a range of challenges specific to the healthcare sector that a VMS needs to account for. 

• Infection control. Unmanaged visitor access can pose a serious risk to patients and staff in healthcare environments if a robust process is not in place. A digital visitor management system can help enforce health and safety protocols, enabling you to collect the information you need such as screening questions and signed safety policies.
• Vaccination verification. Healthcare organisations may need to restrict access based on immunisation records or health screening requirements to maintain safety protocols. A VMS can efficiently verify and track required health documentation for staff and visitors entering premises where such verification is necessary.
• Patient privacy protection. Protecting patient privacy and sensitive medical information is of utmost importance. Traditional sign in processes such as visitor log books pose the risk of sharing personal information, but a digital visitor management system can help ensure that only authorised individuals have access to data, reducing the risk of breaches and unauthorised disclosures. 

A VMS can also assist organisations with their own specific safety requirements, along with emergency evacuations. 

Digital safety management

In today’s tech-empowered world, paper systems are being rapidly replaced with superior digital alternatives that better enable organisations to achieve a range of goals. 

Transitioning from manual sign in books to a digital VMS is straightforward, allowing healthcare institutions to deliver on key objectives in a single move. Controlled, standardised sign in solutions provide a range of advantages over paper processes, including in data security, compliance and reporting.

Modern solutions also come with real-time visitor monitoring capabilities at any point in time. This can include monitoring movements throughout a premises and providing a real-time head count to assist with emergency evacuations.

Digital tools can also aid security efforts by blocking high-risk individuals, or restricting visitor access to sensitive areas. 

The technology can be customised to suit organisations, both from a branding point of view and with added functionality. In healthcare settings, that can include requiring custom data fields to adhere to specific compliance regulations.

Case study: See how Oakland care homes used custom data to personalise questions for different types of visitor, including monitoring vaccination status during the Covid pandemic. 

Implementation best practices

In order to realise the full value of a modern visitor management solution, it pays to take a deliberate approach to implementing it successfully.

This means having a complete implementation and onboarding strategy to establish and monitor how the technology is used, and monitor/optimise if necessary.

• Staff training. All staff should understand how the technology works so they can gain access to buildings and areas efficiently. It should also become a standard part of onboarding for any new staff.
• Visitor communication strategies. The way the VMS communicates with visitors should be aligned to other communications to make sure messages are consistent. That means ensuring it’s kept up to date with wider communication strategies and includes compliance checks. You will likely also need to communicate with patients and regular visitors around when the new system is turned on, so they know how to use it.
• Policy management. Facility policies should be presented on the VMS to ensure they are read and signed or agreed to where it’s relevant. Processes around policy updates should also include VMS considerations, so new information can be uploaded and displayed as needed.
• Ongoing compliance maintenance. Your VMS should be routinely monitored and updated to ensure ongoing compliance with new or existing regulations.

Read more: How Sign In App can ensure guests read policies, NDAs and other messages 

Future-proofing healthcare safety

A modern visitor management system is a good example of how healthcare safety can evolve. However, it is certainly not the end of that evolution. 

It’s important to adopt a culture of ongoing improvement, and utilise updates and customisation features within a VMS to ensure it complies with best practice into the future.

In particular, this can include developments in emerging healthcare safety trends:

• Contactless and digital check-ins
• Integrations with screening protocols during check-in
• Real-time visitor tracking and contact tracing

Where possible, new technologies should come with integration opportunities to create efficiencies, cost savings and greater healthcare outcomes. 

These feed into wider scalability considerations, such as expanding organisations to new premises or other facilities and managing a greater number of patients, staff and visitors.

Sign In App is trusted by healthcare facilities across the globe for our visitor management and appointment scheduling solutions. Get started with a 15 day free trial today, or if you have any questions, you can get in touch with our team 24 hours a day, 5 days a week via live chat, phone and email.