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Tips for creating a prisoner policy with law enforcement

Healthcare Security Weekly, January 13, 2005

Consider these tips when creating your prisoner patient policy with law enforcement personnel:

* Before admitting a high-risk patient, train the local police department to notify the hospital in advance.

* Teach law enforcement about hospital emergency information like basic emergency codes, phone numbers, who to contact, and lines of communication. Some hospitals create a document for law enforcement officers to sign, acknowledging that they received the information.

* Typically, the law enforcement officer is in charge of the prisoner patient. This means he or she would likely determine whether a high-risk patients can have visitors during their stay. In addition, the officer is also the point person for any medical updates on the high-risk patient's condition.

* Remember that prisoners are still patients. Law enforcement personnel cannot disclose any information about patients. "If possible, [the patient] should have a door [to his or her room]," says Cameron Bruce, PE, CSP, president of Cameron Bruce Associates, a healthcare safety consulting firm in Orinda, CA. "Patients are due a respectable amount of privacy."

* Establish detailed guidelines about the law enforcement presence in the hospital. The policy should scrutinize every detail down to whether a law officer can keep his or her weapon, says Earl Williams, HSP, safety coordinator for BroMenn Healthcare in Bloomington, IL.

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