With 1,300 cameras recording 24/7 and more than 1,000 investigations to process per year, MGH’s security team was not able to keep up with the vast amounts of recorded video.That predicament has been alleviated following the integration of the Milestone XProtect video management software (VMS) platform and BriefCam Syndex Pro, which enables rapid video review, search and analysis.

The Challenge

The MGH Police, Security and Outside Services Department provides security services to many other hospitals and facilities affiliated with Partners Healthcare, a Boston-based nonprofit hospital and physicians network.Following its recent digital conversion, unified on the Milestone XProtect VMS platform, MGH’s security team was able to expand camera coverage by adding new Axis network cameras directly to the existing IP network.

“The number of investigations we were doing was taking huge amounts of time in terms of reviewing video, and that was really a waste of time,” says Bonnie Michelman, MGH executive director of Police, Security and Outside Services and consultant for Partners Healthcare.The hospital environment presents unique challenges to security, Michelman points out.

MGH’s 17-acre urban campus, comprising 29 contiguous and 14 separate buildings (including underground and freestanding garage facilities), is complex.The security team must also take into account not only the main location, but also dozens of satellite facilities around the Boston area.

“We can’t cover all of these facilities with security staff,” says Michelman. “We need to augment heavily with very good, state-of- the-art technology that allows us to combine our intelligence, labor, policies and procedures, in order to create a better holistic approach to enterprise risk management.”Charged with creating a safe environment, MGH’s security team at the same time is challenged by the clinical team’s needs for increased efficiency through lowering length of stay and moving patients through the hospital as quickly as possible.

The 24-hour emergency room, with its anxious, highly volatile population presents challenges of its own. In addition, patient elopement and patient wandering — unauthorized departures from the medical facility, whether intentional or unintentional — pose liability threats that can be very damaging to a hospital.