Hospital access, security is a real balancing act

Too much security can make a tense trip to the hospital that much more stressful, said Mike Angeline, the safety and security director for Mount Carmel Health System. "Do I want to put a 90-year-old lady through a metal detector?" Still, a Dispatch survey found that local hospitals are, in general, putting more precautions in place. Children's, for example, installed metal detectors in the emergency department of its new hospital, which opened this year. Visitors also must be included on a list of approved guests before they can access an upper floor to see an ill child. Even then, they have access only to that patient's unit.