Hospital security is an important topic in 2025. Each year, crime affects the morale of healthcare workers and the reputation of hospitals. Violent crime also financially affects hospitals, with losses totaling $18.27 billion in 2023. To address these problems, hospitals have invested in workplace violence education. A study performed by the International Association for Healthcare Security and Safety (IAHSS) Foundation found that 97% of hospitals had implemented workplace violence policies. However, hospital security and safety policies are far from a complete solution.
One of the most effective ways of strengthening hospital security is through technology. Cloud-based access control systems, visitor management, motion sensors, and video surveillance cameras help automate security and operational efficiency. These technologies drastically increase efficiency, safety, and oversight — protecting patients, staff, equipment, and data.
In this guide, we’ll explore ways to protect your healthcare facilities, the most useful hospital security solutions, and how to get started. Let’s begin!
In this Article
- The Importance of Hospital Security in 2025
- Best Security Practices for Hospitals
- Checklist: Your Roadmap to Better Hospital Security
- The Most Important Parts of Hospital Security Systems
- Security Trends: Cloud-based Access Control for Multiple Buildings
- Safer Hospitals: Advanced Monitoring and Virtual Guarding
- Grants for Hospital Security
- Final Thoughts
Why Hospital and Healthcare Security is Important
Hundreds of people pass through the world’s busiest hospitals every day. From nurses and doctors to administrative staff and patients, everyone who visits a hospital expects it to be safe. Unfortunately, the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported that healthcare workers experience 48% of all nonfatal injuries because of workplace violence. While that statistic may be shocking, it underscores the crucial importance of strong security in hospitals and healthcare facilities.
Best Security Practices for Hospitals
How healthcare organizations mitigate violence, theft, and vandalism is a complex question. It requires security directors to create emergency plans, train staff, and successfully implement new technologies. All this work doesn’t even account for the importance of efficient day-to-day operations and monitoring.
However, before you spend another dime on door readers or surveillance cameras, make sure you take a look at “Checklist: Your Roadmap to Better Hospital Security.”
Checklist: Your Roadmap to Better Hospital Security
Before investing in new HD surveillance cameras, access control, or any other security technology, it’s important to consider your security from a holistic viewpoint. The checklist below will help you consider what you might be missing and where you can improve.
- Security Training for Hospital Staff
Engage employees in efforts to promote a safe workplace. Give doctors, nurses, and administrators the key information, such as how to proceed in a lockdown emergency, how to report theft or violence, and how to interact with the building security system.
- Violence Prevention Programs
Use the workplace violence prevention guidelines established by OSHA. These will help you communicate workplace risk factors, like high employee turnover, working when understaffed, neighborhood crime, and long waits for patients.
- Collaborate with Other Healthcare Security Teams
Spread the knowledge. Security teams can exchange insights on effective policies, technologies, and incident response strategies, helping each facility avoid pitfalls others have encountered. Joint meetings or peer review walkthroughs can reveal vulnerabilities and highlight solutions. Additionally, conversations with other security personnel will give you insight into potential risks, like repeat offenders and crime trends.
- Create a Feedback System
Encourage employee feedback. By gathering employee opinions about the security system, you’ll be able to assess which parts work and which don’t. Even more importantly, this will help determine if employees support the system. If they don’t, your facility is vulnerable.
The Most Important Parts of Hospital Security Systems
In this section, we’ll discuss some of the most important components of a security system for your hospital, including access control, visitor management, and video surveillance. If at any point you’d like to speak with a SafeTouch security expert, don’t hesitate to give us a call.
Access Control Systems
A hospital access control system secures every entrance, room, and gate in a hospital. They regulate who can enter specific areas, ensuring that only authorized staff, patients, and visitors have access.
How Does it Work?
These systems may include key cards or mobile credentials and electronic card readers. When someone needs access, they show the key card to the reader. If the credential information from the key card is valid, then the door will unlock.
Why is Access Control Essential?
By securing entrances, exits, and restricted zones, hospitals can prevent theft, unauthorized access to medications or equipment, and potential threats to patient and staff safety. Integrating access control with surveillance and visitor management further enhances overall security and creates a safer healthcare environment.
Feature: Role-based Credentials
One of the defining techniques of good security is to restrict access permissions to those who need it most. As you might imagine, different areas in hospital buildings have different access requirements. For example, X-ray technicians need access to radiology and imaging rooms, but not necessarily to cardiac cath labs. How does access control solve this?
Many modern access control systems enable security administrators to assign role-based credentials. In the case of the x-ray technician, these role-based credentials will give them access to only the areas necessary for their role.
Visitor Management in Hospital Lobbies
Another defining part of hospital security is visitor management. Visitor management allows security teams to pre-register visitors, issue temporary badges, and track their movement within the facility.
How Does it Work?
Let’s look at an example of how visitor management works at hospitals. A vendor delivering medical equipment needs access to a storage room from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. The hospital’s security team can grant access to the vendor and provision a temporary digital key card. The security team simply inputs the vendor’s information and access restrictions, then sends an email containing the digital badge. This badge distribution feature can also be used for interns, visiting family members, and more.
Why is Visitor Management Essential?
By combining visitor tracking with access control, hospitals reduce the risk of unauthorized entry and improve accountability. These systems help monitor who enters the facility, ensuring that only authorized guests have access. By combining visitor tracking with access control, hospitals can issue temporary credentials, limit the areas visitors can access, and keep a detailed log of their movements.
Feature: Limited Lobby Traffic
Managing lobby traffic is a key part of hospital visitor management. It helps reduce congestion while also maintaining a safe environment. By using systems to schedule visitor appointments, hospitals can prevent overcrowding in waiting areas. The payoff? Patient comfort improves, administrators are less stressed, and security guards can more easily keep track of people.
Surveillance Cameras
Security cameras are a critical component of hospital access control and overall safety. They keep staff, patients, and visitors protected by monitoring various areas within the hospital building. Additionally, surveillance cameras often deter crime, but should a crime occur, you’ll have a recorded video log.
How Do They Work?
Modern systems use high-definition cameras integrated with video management software. Cameras can be fixed or pan-tilt-zoom (PTZ), and many feature motion detection or AI-powered analytics that alert security personnel to unusual behavior in real time. Recorded footage can be reviewed for investigations, compliance audits, or training purposes.
Why are Security Cameras Essential?
By providing constant visual oversight, cameras deter theft and other crime. They also help security teams quickly respond to incidents such as intrusions. When integrated with access control and visitor management, they create a comprehensive security network that tracks who enters and moves within the hospital. Surveillance cameras ensure patient and staff safety, and help maintain a secure and well-monitored healthcare environment.
Feature: AI-enhanced Video Monitoring
A trending feature in hospital surveillance is AI-enhanced monitoring. With artificial intelligence, cameras can automatically detect, follow, and log who’s in a facility and when. These cameras help identify unusual behavior, track individuals across multiple zones, and alert security staff in real time to potential threats. AI-enhanced detection and high-definition resolution help security teams clearly monitor buildings.
Access control, visitor management, and surveillance cameras are the basics most hospitals need. However, if you’re looking for more technology, ask a SafeTouch expert about motion sensors, lighting, and alarm systems.
Security Trends: Cloud-based Access Control
Due to the ongoing maintenance costs and limited scalability, businesses and organizations with multiple buildings have pivoted from on-premises access control. The replacement is cloud-based access control. These systems connect and store data within cloud servers, giving security teams the ability to unify their security infrastructure across multiple buildings and locations.
If you run security at a large hospital, the cloud makes it easier to connect all your systems. If you oversee multiple healthcare locations, cloud-based access control allows you to manage everything from a single monitor.
Below are some advantages in more detail:
- Cost savings
Since cloud access control systems do not require hospitals to purchase and store expensive servers to host their data, hospitals save on upfront costs. They also eliminate future costs associated with server maintenance and upkeep.
- Enhanced operational efficiency
The cloud brings more features and integrations to your access control. These help streamline work processes, making it easier to activate and deactivate key cards; respond swiftly to emergencies; monitor hallways, supply rooms, dispensaries, parking lots, and offices.
- Remote management
With on-prem systems, remote access is slow and cumbersome. However, with a cloud system, all you need is an internet connection. Teams can provision, monitor, and manage their security from anywhere. This is especially advantageous for security teams overseeing multiple buildings.
- Scalability
Scalability is also easier with the cloud. If your hospital adds a new building or wing, you won’t need to worry about buying more server space. With the cloud, all your data is hosted off-site, so you’ll never have a problem.
Safer Hospitals: Advanced Monitoring and Virtual Guarding
Security guards protect hospitals 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. According to ZipRecruiter, the average guard salary is $18.78 per hour — not a lot of money compared to what you could lose each year. However, if your hospital needs failsafe security, a virtual guard system is a great option.
Virtual guards combine technology — access control systems, intercoms, motion sensors, and video management — with human security guards to give hospitals a multi-layered security solution.
How Does Virtual Guarding Work in Hospitals?
Virtual guards are helpful in hospital buildings that require extra security. For example, if an unauthorized visitor breaches the door to a patient’s room, the hospital’s access control system will send an alert to the hospital’s security team and an off-site monitoring center. At centers like the SafeTouch monitoring center, emergency response agents are standing by. When they receive the door alert, the SafeTouch agents will contact the local authorities and your security team in less than 45. Together, all personnel can identify the breach and take action.
Here’s the breakdown in steps:
- Incident Observed: The hospital’s access control or video management system picks up an incident.
- Virtual Guard Notification: The third-party monitoring center reaches out to local authorities and the hospital security team.
- Coordinated Response: Together, the first responders, virtual guards, and on-site security guards will coordinate and address the situation.
With a multi-level approach, hospitals can quickly address security issues when they arise.
Why Consider Virtual Guarding?
There are two reasons hospitals and healthcare facilities might consider virtual guarding. These reasons include:
- Replacing onsite security guards: Cuts costs; 24/7 monitoring
- Supporting onsite security teams: Fastest and most failsafe way to respond and mitigate emergencies; provides extra management and monitoring
The International Association for Healthcare Security and Safety (IAHSS) Foundation found that hospitals averaged 9.5 full-time security employees per 100 beds. For some under-funded or rural hospitals, hiring full-time security guards might not be an option. Hospitals must pay the guard’s salary, onboarding, and continuous training. Conversely, a third-party company trains virtual guards who will monitor your sites 24/7.
Grants for Hospital Security
Private and public grants are available to those hospitals that need a little extra help. Find more information about upcoming grant opportunities, take a look at these organizations:
- The Hospital Preparedness Program (HPP): Federal funding dedicated specifically to healthcare readiness. HPP is open to private and public institutions. It offers grants for security as well as other healthcare efforts.
- Nonprofit Security Grant Program: The NSGP is another federal funding resource for target hardening and other physical security enhancements for nonprofit organizations. In 2025, $210 million was allocated to the fund.
For more opportunities, visit www.grants.gov or search for state-funded grants.
Make Your Hospital Safer Today
You know your hospital’s security needs better than anyone. Make sure you get a customized security solution designed specifically for your unique needs. With over 30 years in the security industry, we’ll help you assess, purchase, install, and monitor your next hospital security system. Plus, our security team will monitor your system 24/7, and with a guaranteed response time of 45 seconds or less, we’ll always have your back. Give us a call at 888.895.SAFE (7233) to speak with a SafeTouch expert today!