You might be thinking to yourself, “We are a small hospital; we know everyone coming and going. We would notice if someone was trying to abduct an infant. Our doors into the Mother-Baby Unit are always locked. It can’t happen here!” These statements while sincere and well intentioned, don’t prepare you for the abduction of an innocent newborn. Then you’ll be asking yourself, “How did that happen? What should we have done?”
If you find yourself thinking, “It can’t happen here”, you might be one open door away from tragedy. What is stopping your facility from securing your most vulnerable patients? Listed below are strategies criminals often use in an attempt to by-pass security and enter a locked down facility (Limited access through controlled entry and exit points):
Outlining strategies to easily enter a hospital without authorization shows the reality of an abduction. We don’t always hear about it because it is a PR nightmare for a hospital. On occasion, situations like these can even go undocumented. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children has a number of well-documented stats to consider:
Over 43% of abductions occur within US hospitals:
Abductions occur in multiple locations:
While no official statistics are kept, instances where an infant is presented to the wrong mother are more common than infant abduction. Neither of these events should ever happen in a hospital. How secure are you in thinking these situations won’t happen in your own facility?
IMS has experience protecting the most vulnerable little ones. The first HUGS patient security system IMS installed over 19 years ago is still in operation today. We take pride in our continued service to patient security and have never had to uninstalled a single system in our territory.
How did we achieve this success?