High-Risk in Healthcare Facilities

The smallest category of active shooter situations is represented by health care facilities, at which four incidents have taken place, resulting in 10 deaths and 10 injuries. Of those fatalities, two were police officers.

However, due to different manners of reporting, the Annals of Emergency Medicine say that there have been 154 hospital-related shootings between 2000 and 2011.

Needless to say, health care facilities present unique problems for security because often, mentally unstable people end up in emergency rooms for issues other than physical injury. Many times, drug use prompts the visit and physical outburst by patients create unsafe environments that could require lockdown or hostage situations.

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“(A) big takeaway from the Wisconsin incident was the need to clearly let staff know that alerts and announcements during the incident were not just a practice drill.”

How to Survive a Hospital Shooting

- Medpage Today