Aug. 13--Ohio hospitals were built to heal, but the recent shooting death of a woman in Akron is a reminder that they aren't immune to violence.
Statistics are hard to come by; the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services doesn't track hospital violence. But an incomplete Joint Commission count shows that violent incidents at U.S. hospitals in 2011 reached their highest level in at least 17 years.
The Joint Commission, a national, nonprofit health-care accrediting agency, reviewed 49 homicides, assaults and rapes that occurred in hospitals last year but said that's a fraction of the actual number because reporting of such incidents is voluntary.
John Wise, 66, has been charged in the Aug. 4 shooting of his wife, Barbara, at her bedside in the intensive-care unit of Akron General Medical Center. She died the next morning. They had been married for 45 years.
The case appears similar to an apparent mercy killing in 2005 at Mount Carmel East Hospital. In that case, Harry Brown shot his wife of 50 years, Inge, to death in her hospital bed and then returned to the couple's Gahanna apartment. Soon after, police shot and killed him on his front step after he pulled a gun on officers.
Like other public places, hospitals must strike a balance between giving visitors freedom while ensuring their safety and that of patients and employees.
"There's a fine line between having an environment that's friendly and open and one that has the feeling of being locked down," said Mike Mandelkorn, the security director for Ohio State University's Wexner Medical Center.
Added Dan Yaross, the new security director at Nationwide Children's Hospital, "It's an art more than a science."
Too much security can make a tense trip to the hospital that much more stressful, said Mike Angeline, the safety and security director for Mount Carmel Health System. "Do I want to put a 90-year-old lady through a metal detector?"
Still, a Dispatch survey found that local hospitals are, in general, putting more precautions in place.
Children's, for example, installed metal detectors in the emergency department of its new hospital, which opened this year. Visitors also must be included on a list of approved guests before they can access an upper floor to see an ill child. Even then, they have access only to that patient's unit.
Children's, Mount Carmel West, Mount Carmel East and St. Ann's recently began using electronic systems in which visitors have a driver's license or other photo identification scanned and incorporated on a personalized badge.
Mount Carmel said it hopes to connect its system to national databases in about six months that would, for example, help hospital employees identify sexual predators.
OhioHealth's Grant Medical Center, Riverside Methodist Hospital and Doctors Hospital have metal detectors in their emergency departments. The emergency department at Dublin Methodist Hospital does not.
Wexner Medical Center installed them there in 2005.
Mount Carmel Health System hospitals use hand-held wands throughout their facilities to detect weapons. In emergency departments, they're used on anybody wishing to see a patient who has been the victim of domestic violence or gang activity, Angeline said.
Security officers carry guns at Riverside, Grant and Doctors, but OhioHealth officials declined to say whether officers at its other hospitals do.
Wexner, Children's and Mount Carmel officials said their security officers don't carry firearms, though Mount Carmel's security forces are armed with collapsible batons and pepper spray. Wexner officials, however, noted that campus police are close by to help handle security problems, and Children's augments its security with Columbus police officers at certain times.
Children's said its security-incident reports increased 6.4 percent between 2008 and 2011. During that period, the number of patients grew 20 percent. The hospital's incident reports cover everything from family domestic disputes and employee injuries (including falls) to vandalism and theft.
Mount Carmel said the number of "disturbances" at its hospitals declined 27 per-cent between 2009 and 2011. Wexner officials said the number of "unruly visitors" increased from 110 in 2008 to 256 in 2011.
OhioHealth declined to provide data.
Hospital workers are at considerably greater risk of assault in the workplace than in most other types of employment, according to a study released in January by the National Council on Compensation Insurance, which is based in Boca Raton, Fla.
The study found that there were 7.7 assaults that resulted in lost work time per 10,000 workers at hospitals in 2009, more than four times higher than in the general population. The assaults include violence against employees by not only patients but also co-workers and visitors.
Still, the overall assault rate was far lower at hospitals than at nursing homes, where the assault rate was 20.9 per 10,000 workers.Security experts say all hospital staff members should be trained to recognize signs of potential violence.
And though too many hospitals let security matters fall to their maintenance staffs, more are coming to the realization that they can't make security an afterthought and need professionals to oversee it, said Bryan Warren, the president of the International Association of Healthcare Security and Safety.
"It's no longer the orderly in the hallway that someone calls when someone gets out of hand, or the person at the desk with his feet up," Warren said.
@BenSutherly
Copyright 2012 - The Columbus Dispatch, Ohio
