Connecticut Children's Medical Center

"Protecting Our Future"

By the numbers:

Number of buildings:  1 primary facility with 375,000 sq. ft.

Number of beds:  135

Number of visitors processed per day:  2200 per day

Number of vendors processed per day:  50-100 per day

Number of EasyLobby Visitor Management Stations in use: 8

The Need for Visitor Management

Connecticut Children's Medical Center began a search in 2004 for a system to improve upon their existing visitor management 'system', which at that point in time consisted of color-coded plastic badges and paper sign-in sheets.

Getting the right pass for the right person was an ”extremely cumbersome” process, according to Phillip LeClair, CHPA, Security Manager at Connecticut Children’s Medical Center. In addition, the medical center’s search for a better solution was accelerated by a security incident in early 2005, after which the state asked the hospital to enhance the way they processed and tracked visitors.

The EasyLobby Solution

The medical center initially became interested in EasyLobby's robust feature set, which closely aligned with their organizational goals:to manage visitors securely, flexibly and simply. During EasyLobby's free web demo, Connecticut Children’s Medical Center was immediately impressed with the power and flexibility of EasyLobby.  Of particular interest was the ability to configure EasyLobby with all of the peripherals the medical center wanted, including business card, drivers' license and barcode scanners as well as digital cameras.

Today, EasyLobby is “used to the fullest” at Connecticut Children’s Medical Center, according to LeClair. "We use EasyLobby to check in every visitor who enters our facility, at every entrance. All locations in the hospital are listed in the Category field and the inpatient being visited is prominently displayed. Visitor passes are printed with a barcode for check-out. Even employees who have lost or forgotten their IDs are processed via EasyLobby."

Connecticut Children’s Medical Center also uses EasyLobby to produce multi-day visitor passes, allowing them to be checked in and out with a quick and easy barcode scan, either at a badging station or with EasyLobby’s mobile scanners. Service levels are enhanced by using EasyLobby's self-check-in kiosk, which provides a touch screen and driver’s license scanner for visitors, and the e-Advance web-based system, which allows employees to pre-register visitors through the hospital intranet.

Other EasyLobby features used by Connecticut Children’s Medical Center include the Watch List to flag unwanted visitors, the Panic Button, Email Alerts and both custom and required fields.

In addition, the medical center recently added networked DYMO label printers on their inpatient unit floors, allowing corrected or updated passes to be printed from the lobby stations and delivered to visitors already at the inpatient unit.

Successful Results

Connecticut Children’s Medical Center uses the percentage of visitors checked out as an ROI indicator and is currently achieving a 90% check-out rate. The medical center has also benefitted from being able to use EasyLobby database records for internal investigations, to assist law enforcement and prevent incidents.

"What we particularly like about EasyLobby is its flexibility and expandability" said LeClair. "We started with 1 workstation and quickly expanded to 8 workstations to encompass the entire facility. EasyLobby has been great to work with and is actually one of the security tools that sold me on taking the job as Security Manager at Connecticut Children’s Medical Center – it really does help us to live up to our mission to protect our future.”

LeClair also stated that Connecticut Children’s Medical Center had recently received a security audit from a leading security consultant, who not only gave the facility a top review, but also suggested that Connecticut Children’s Medical Center may be among the most secure Children's Hospitals in the US.

Future Plans