Ten questions to ask your security provider.
Not a sales sheet — a screen. These are the ten questions a healthcare-security specialist answers without pausing, and that a competent generalist usually can’t. Ask them of anyone bidding your work, us included. If a provider can answer all ten well, you’ve found a specialist, whoever they are.
Nothing is gated. No email, no login — print it, mark it up, take it into the meeting.
The point isn’t to catch anyone out. It’s that hospital security has specifics a generalist has never had to learn — and the fastest way to tell the difference is to ask. Each answer below is what “good” sounds like, so you can judge for yourself.
“Where does our ED screening policy create an unscreened path into the care area — and is that written down?”
What a good answer sounds like. A specialist names the critical-patient and ambulance-bay carve-out immediately, and treats it as a governance fact, not a gap to shame you with. A generalist proposes another detector at the main door.
“On our behavioral-health unit, is any device you’d mount a candidate ligature point — and at what height?”
What a good answer sounds like. The right answer is “all of them, and there is no minimum height.” If they talk about a “ligature-resistant” product line instead of an assessment discipline, they’re selling a SKU.
“An elopement and a discharge are the same act. How does your system know the difference?”
What a good answer sounds like. It doesn’t — that’s a capacity judgment made upstream. A specialist says so and talks about routing and acknowledgment; a generalist sells you a better door contact.
“Our infant-tag system has been quiet for years. How would you test whether it still works?”
What a good answer sounds like. A specialist distinguishes a deliberate test from a drill, and names staff impersonation and the fire stairwell. Silence is not evidence, and they should say so.
“A pharmacy badge log shows an authorized person doing an authorized thing. How do you surface diversion?”
What a good answer sounds like. Reconciliation across badge, dispensing, order, waste, shift, and video — not the access log alone. And the register should be evidentiary, not an accusation aimed at your nurses.
“After an incident, can one person retrieve the full time-synchronized record — and will it still exist months later?”
What a good answer sounds like. Retrieval without hand-stitching, and retention that outlasts an investigation window. “We’d pull the footage” is one system; the account is all of them, aligned.
“Our garage is concrete. Does the equipment you spec behave there the way it does in a corridor?”
What a good answer sounds like. Reverberation degrades microphone-based location, and the datasheet won’t say where. A specialist knows the structure is a different building; a generalist quotes the same part list.
“We’re renovating. At which drawing stage do our security decisions stop being reversible?”
What a good answer sounds like. Geometry closes at schematic, pathways at construction documents — before the concrete. If they only show up at bid, the cheap decisions are already gone.
“Which edition of the FGI Guidelines will our state enforce when this building opens — not which we’re drawing to now?”
What a good answer sounds like. A specialist knows the 2022 edition is operative, the wearable-duress requirement is in the unpublished 2026 edition, and adoption varies by state. A generalist has never heard of FGI.
“Where does your part end and ours begin?”
What a good answer sounds like. The clearest tell of all. A specialist cedes the program, the clinical calls, and the compliance determination without being asked. Anyone who claims to own all of it is overselling.
Ask us the same ten. If any answer here is wrong for a hospital like yours, tell us — we’d rather fix the sheet than defend it.