• E-mail
• Print
• RSS

Crime victims offer security challenge

Healthcare Security Weekly, December 20, 2004

Hospital officials in Des Moines, IL, are struggling with crime victims often dropped at the emergency room doors, the Des Moines Register reported.

Last week four men in a van pulled up to Mercy Medical Center and dumped one man, who was critically wounded, and another man, pronounced dead upon arrival, at the emergency room doors.

"Dump-and-runs are part of emergency medicine everywhere, but they're much more common in an urban environment," Eric Dickson, who oversees the Emergency Treatment Center at University Hospitals in Iowa City, told the Register.

The dump-and-runs can be startling for hospital staff and visitors.

One way hospital security responds to such a patient is to lock down the facility. When someone dumps a gunshot or stabbing victim in the parking lot at St. Luke's Hospital, "we'll lock down the hospital to some extent," said Terry Moyle, the hospital's security supervisor. "The suspect could still be in pursuit and en route to the hospital as part of the incident."

Security guards lock most entrances and stand guard at the unlocked main doors, Moyle said.

• E-mail to a Colleague
• Print
• RSS
• Archive