How to Be Smart About Smart Locks

Why Use Access Control in Your Aged Care Home?

4 December 2018 by Lily Dixon

Your aged care home needs to provide a secure and safe environment for your residents. When you're installing or upgrading security systems, you should pay some extra attention to external and internal locks in the building.

Access control systems that manage building entrances and some internal areas can make this easier. How can access control make your care home safer and more secure?

Control Who Comes in

If you have an access control lock on your entrance doors, then you have more control over who comes into your care home. If you can only open the door manually with a swipe card or code, then any visitors have to buzz in when they arrive to get a member of staff to let them in.

Not allowing visitors free access to your building helps protect your residents and your staff. Aged care homes can be busy places. People come and go all the time. The people working or living in your home may be so used to seeing new faces around that they don't always question people that they haven't seen before.

While most people who come into your home are there for legitimate reasons, some may not be. If your door is easily opened by any visitor, then a thief could come in and steal stuff from your resident's rooms or communal areas.

Control Where People Go

There are areas in your home that should be kept secure. For example, you don't want residents being able to wander into your medical supply rooms or kitchens.

If some of your residents have dementia or are simply a little confused, then they may remove medications out of supply rooms and take them without you knowing. They may get burned or have an accident if they wander around your kitchen without supervision.

While you can lock restricted or dangerous areas, a regular lock isn't as convenient for your staff as an access-controlled door. Keys can get lost or stolen; a keypad or swipe card access is a lot easier.

Plus, you can set permissions on access control systems to make sure that staff access is restricted to the areas where they are supposed to be. For example, you can set your system to allow all staff with a swipe card to open your entrance door. However, you restrict access to medical supply rooms to the cards carried by a few key nursing staff.

To find out more about how to get the most use out of an access control system in your aged care home, contact your locksmith and ask for advice.

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