Editorial: When health meets crime

OPINION: Security guards at a children's health centre in Nova Scotia have been measured up for bullet and slash-proof vests in response to a carpark shooting there last year.

It's not the only Canadian hospital to take the dramatic measure, but in some countries hospitals don't even bother with security staff.

That is a reflection of the New Zealand situation where hospital security levels vary enormously between the country's health boards, and the decision last year to beef things up and employ a security manager at Waikato Hospital was very much a case of one health board making its own call.

Waikato has not fitted anyone out with bullet-proof vests – but its $1.1 million security budget does cover new security cameras.

Those cameras have made the news by helping police, who now have a daily presence on site, make a pair of arrests and recover missing hospital equipment. Ironically, and embarrassingly, the first arrested was a security guard.

Now it is alleged the second man arrested was helping himself while thousands of dollars of public money was being invested to prevent the death, a short distance away, of a family member in intensive care.

The scenarios are nothing new to hospital staff. They have endured ongoing petty theft and antisocial behaviour on the wards.

That in itself is nothing unusual – the Waikato Hospital community has the migratory population of a year-round tourist destination catering for a 5300-strong influx of visitors every day.

A feature in the Waikato Times recently gave some examples of the type of violence and abuse to which staff have been subjected.

Drunken or ranting patients attacked a doctor and a nurse in separate incidents. In both instances the people being treated went for the head of their victim in trying to harm them.

The list of items stolen by other low-lifes who infest the hospital included wallets, handbags, cellphones and cameras. Some of the perpetrators are members of youth gangs who have used the hospital as a hangout, others are part of an unwelcome community which, particularly in winter, sees the hospital as a doss house.

The Times was alluding to the higher-tech approach being taken at the hospital to fight crime when it referred to a security system developed by Hamilton's Gallagher Group to monitor access, alarms and CCTV systems.

The cameras are already paying their way, albeit in two cases involving items of small value. More changes are ahead, notably to the way people can get into the massive hospital complex.

In the past anyone could get in virtually anywhere, and that has left patients, visitors, staff and the complex vulnerable.

The board has already committed to plans which would drastically reduce the number of areas where access to the building can be achieved.

The Waikato District Health Board is making its biggest hospital a safer place. It is just a shame a slice of its health budget must be set aside to be spent on crime prevention.

- © Fairfax NZ News