Healthcare · Behavioral health

On this unit, the thing we mount on the wall can become the hazard.

Every device an integrator installs — camera housing, door closer, duress button, sensor, conduit, hinge — is a candidate ligature point. And the regulator sets no minimum height. That is not a comfortable thing for a security firm to lead with. It is the only honest way into this area.

Walk the corridor — run the check →No minimum height

Our own exposure, named first

Everywhere else in a hospital, the security layer is the answer, the obstacle, or the afterthought. Here it is the risk itself. The camera housing, the closer, the duress button, the bracket — each is something a patient could use, and the regulator’s language is blunt about it: a sustainable point of attachment is a ligature risk with no minimum height. The intuition that low things are safe is simply wrong.

So every housing, closer, hinge, and conduit run we install is either designed for this unit or it is a finding waiting for a surveyor. You cannot eliminate every risk, so the discipline is to eliminate what you can and document the rest — mitigate, and watch. And “watch” means a person, which means staffing, which means the security decision became a labor cost. That is why what we mount on your wall is your problem, not just ours.

What we build — held to the standard

The bar our own work has to clear.

The environmental risk assessment is a clinical determination and it is yours. Our job is narrower: everything we mount has to pass it — and most hardware, specified the ordinary way, does not.

—Hardware that survives the assessment. Hinges, mounts, housings, closers, sensors — specified so they don’t become the thing you then have to mitigate. That is the whole discipline, and it is not a product you buy.

—Differentiated egress. Free from inside for staff-badge, controlled for the patient, with a code-response override that is fast, logged, and does not depend on a key arriving from someone’s pocket.

—Duress that reaches the clinical team. On this unit the response is the staff on the floor, not a remote console — so staff duress has to reach staff, close by, not a screen elsewhere.

—Video, and the line we will not cross. Corridors and egress — not bedrooms or bathrooms, where the risk concentrates. That is a genuine limit of what physical security should see. We state it, and we will not offer to see there.

Why ligature resistance is an assessment discipline, not a product — and why our own hardware is in scope →

The physical layer we own

The assessment is the clinician’s. Passing it is ours.

The environmental risk assessment, the suicide-risk screening, the mitigation plan, the one-to-one monitoring decisions, the clinical response to a code — those are yours, and they cannot be subcontracted to an integrator.

Ours is narrower and more specific: everything we mount on your unit has to pass that assessment. There is no minimum height, which means every housing, closer, bracket, and conduit run we install is either designed for this unit or it is a finding waiting for a surveyor. Nothing here says we don’t do something — it says here is the bar our work has to clear, and most work doesn’t.

Start here

Walk the corridor and look at what’s already on the wall.

The check

Look at every mounted device — including ours — as a candidate

Walkable from the corridor and unoccupied rooms only — no patient, no clinician. Look at the low ones. No minimum height. No email; nothing stored.

Run the check → The depth

No minimum height

The four words that undo the intuition every buyer brings — and the argument our own industry avoids because it costs the easy sale.

Read the article →

Talk to a specialist →

Before you leave

The locked unit is an elopement control — but the population that elopes isn’t only on this unit. The involuntary patient on a safety hold and the confused elder two floors up on med-surg are the same problem with a different chart. You own the locked perimeter. You very likely don’t own the wanderer. Open elopement & wandering →