Mercy Prescribes Security Screening for Its Emergency Departments to Ameliorate Clinical Staff Safety Concerns

A central mission for Mercy is to ensure that patients and visitors feel as safe and secure as possible when visiting one of Mercy's facilities. It is also critical that hospital staff, or coworkers as Mercy refers to them, can provide care to patients in a safe environment. “Our patients, family members, and staff need to feel secure because everyone who is entering has gone through the same processes to ensure that no one brings a weapon into one of our facilities that they could use to harm themselves, one of our coworkers, or another patient or family member of a patient," says Adam Whitten, Mercy's VP of Operational Excellence.

He continues, "The vast majority take place in our Emergency Departmental and Behavioral Health areas. There is a precipitous fall off from there. We also know that after a certain time of night at most of our facilities, the Emergency Department becomes the only access point to the entire hospital. All other doors are locked and guarded so no one else can come in.” With these two factors in mind, Mercy decided to begin the rollout of the Evolv Express® systems at Mercy's Emergency Departments. By enabling the Evolv Express, Mercy Health Hospitals were able to achieve the following: 

• Facilitate a feeling of safety for Emergency Department staff, enabling them to focus on providing urgent care to patients 
• Improved weapons detection with a dozen weapons found in one backpack, as one example
• 65% fewer resources are now needed to manage Express systems over traditional metal detectors

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