Based on a gently sloping site, the 16-year-old Conquest Hospital is a modern District General Hospital in Hastings. In 2002 Conquest merged with Eastbourne Hospital to form East Sussex Hospitals NHS Trust. The busy trust serves the population of East Sussex and employs over 5000 staff.
Based on a gently sloping site, the 16-year-old Conquest Hospital is a modern District General Hospital in Hastings. In 2002 Conquest merged with Eastbourne Hospital to form East Sussex Hospitals NHS Trust. The busy trust serves the population of East Sussex and employs over 5000 staff.
When the hospital's access system failed in 2007 the cost of installing a new system by their current provider was too high. Security Manager, John Kirk investigated installing the Net2 access control system from Paxton Access.
Kirk said, “Security is very important in this sort of environment. Hundreds of people come through this hospital every day. We were aware of Paxton Access as the market leaders and that their systems set the industry standard.”
Vistec Systems of Crawley installed Net2 across all of the trust's sites, including the main hospital in Hastings, Bexhill Hospital, the Irvine unit, St. Anne's and the Woodlands unit. A total of 6,500 user cards are now issued and 83 doors are controlled by a Net2 System. "The ability to control who has access to which site is essential and Net2 provides us with this,” Kirk said.
The new Net2 system now acts as a deterrent to opportunist theft, and gives the trust total confidence in the access control they have on their blood bank, baby unit and mental health wing.
Being able to prevent access to certain parts of the building with an emergency lock-down, in the event of chemical spill or the need to create a temporary mortuary is also appealing.
The trust is so impressed with Net2 that they plan to integrate it with their fire alarm and extend it across their remaining remote sites. “Compared to our earlier access control system it is far superior,” Kirk said. “This is the best period of security stability we have enjoyed in a long time.”