Communication System for Hospital

Many structural challenges accompanied the design and building of a Veterinary Hospital located in Tinton Falls, N.J., in the construction of its state-of-the-art medical facility. This particular hospital was to become the nation's biggest privately operated veterinary hospital facility.

President and owner of Security World Inc explained that their firm was contacted at the beginning of the project to deploy, sustain and advance the facility's entire life safety and security communications infrastructure. Due to the specific nature of the business, they knew there were a variety of inherit issues that had to be taken into consideration.

To begin with, a traditional life safety system utilizing strobe horns would be a good choice; there are plenty of cheap and powerful technologies that perform a lot better. According to their vast experience, both animals and children react adversely to the harsh, piercing alarm noises. In reality, they have even seen some animals get more aggressive during the sirens operation. Second, it was necessary to exceed minimal safety standards while maintaining a level of cost when dealing with the facility's state-of-the-art design.

In order to meet both standards the president of the security company turned to another security company in Long Branch, N.J., for a solution to this dilemma. He was quickly offered a communications system that caught his attention due to its combined fire alarm and public address functions. The use of voice announcements provided by the system for emergency notification was appealing due to the sensitivity of animals toward certain sounds.

Along with being more pleasant, voice instructions are more likely to be followed during dangerous incidents. An additional advantage to the incorporated system is that, at the same time as fire alarms are hardly ever used, public address systems fulfill a huge amount of services that range from simple paging, to the widespread distribution of non-emergency notifications.

On top to these separate advantages, the joint life safety and public address system also served to meet both of the president’s main criteria which revolved around cost-effectiveness and functionality.

He further explained that the multifunctional nature of the system certainly addressed several key concerns regarding the use of strobe horns in regards to the overall pricing of the unit and its installation no to mention it would also upset the animals. The Wheelock system did not only meet the unique communications needs of the hospital, but it also offered advantages at a cost far less than it would have taken to install individual public address systems and separate fire alarms. In addition, the system is easy to set up and readily expandable to address the needs of a medical practice that has grown significantly since its launch more than fifteen years back.

About twenty two years ago this hospital was a typical one-person business. However, the hospital has advanced remarkably since that time and has endorsed a wide variety of specialties, which include, but are not limited to, surgery, cardiology, dentistry and oral surgery, oncology, dermatology, internal medicine, neurology, and ophthalmology.

It was obvious that the hospital needed to get bigger in order to properly operate all of its functions. It has expanded its premises three times in the ensuing years in order to accommodate the growth and rising demand for its services.

In the present day, the newly opened veterinary hospital employs more than two hundred workers in a three-story, 57,000-square-foot facility which incorporate 26 examination rooms, nine high-tech surgery rooms, 12,000-square-foot waiting area for continuing education, along with 130-seat lecture hall.

The president of the security operations of the building explained that it was a magnificent building that displays style and state-of-the-art capabilities in every corner of its premises.  He further commented that this is one of the primary reasons they chose to work with Wheelock Security Company. The technology solutions provided by SAFEPATH not only thoroughly met their security requirement, but also offered the advantages of a system that they knew required minimal maintenance and the capacity to easily upgrade on an ongoing basis without changing its entire structure.

Although the set up process itself required the use of nearly 100 speaker strobe appliances it nevertheless was concluded in a period of less than four weeks due to the assistance of a few qualified personnel.

In addition to general paging and voice evacuation messaging the system offers the flexibility to deliver pre-recorded tones and/or announcements from either an onboard microphone or remote microphone station. Furthermore, it also merges onboard 24-volt DC power for strobes with either 80 or 40 watts of supervised audio or supervised line-level yield with an eight-tone producer that can be used as a pre-announcement tone or an inquiry. Not the mention that two separate outputs also guarantee that prerecorded messages can be transmitted over multiple zones at the same time with microphone override (all-call) capacity.

The use of NAC circuits that automatically respond when the associated audio output circuit is activated has further deployed the integrity of the system. In addition, each and every module inputs and outputs are monitored with onboard circuitry whereas the module's circuits are supervised by status relays and LEDs for distant problem coverage.

Upon it’s completing the installment of the system throughout the hospital the Fire Department toured the entire facility to get an idea of how the system will come to their aid in times of trouble and other critical situations. They were especially appreciative of the security administrators’ efforts to go beyond the basic requirements of a communications system and invest in system that was worth every penny spent on it. It was obvious that this security solution proved to be the ideal solution for this application especially due to its Trouble-free installation that is no harder to install than a traditional system of communication.

Consequently, the security administrator of the hospital has already begun to upgrade the system with multiple messaging options designed to address a wide range of urgent situations.

Not to mention that they were also very comfortable with the system's expandability thanks to its modular design.