Shan & Randall OG

0:00

S… Speaker 1 (Shan & Randall OG)

I'm excited to be here. I'm Sean Sinha. I'm the founder and CEO of Canopy. It's my privilege and honor to speak with Chief Randy Walston with ECU Health in North Carolina. We're going to talk a lot about Chief Walston and their organization's commitment to the safety of their entire organization. We're going to talk about their initiatives and I feel privileged to be able to talk to you about all the innovative things that you guys are doing here. Thank you.

0:28

S… Speaker 1 (Shan & Randall OG)

Why don't we get started by, Chief, maybe tell us a little bit about yourself, how you ended up in the role that you did, and tell us a little bit about your past and your history and some of the work that you're responsible or some of the things you're responsible for across ECU. Sure. I've been with the same organization for 35 years. When I graduated from college, I was going to go into law enforcement, and the healthcare system that I was

0:57

S… Speaker 2 (Shan & Randall OG)

first involved with had a police department and so my plans were not long-term to stay there but I started there picked up a couple quick promotions and 35 years later I'm still with the same organization why don't we start by getting

1:14

S… Speaker 1 (Shan & Randall OG)

a lay of the land of what security and safety and all the areas that you and your team are responsible for on the behalf of ECU Health. Give us a view of what that means for the 20,000 professionals that are all working across your organization. Sure. You know, we have a full-fledged police department.

1:39

S… Speaker 2 (Shan & Randall OG)

We have nine hospitals in our health care system in eastern North Carolina, and we have one police department serving all nine of those hospitals. We have full responsibility for the security of all the campuses and even our satellite areas, the home health hospice entities. We have purview over all of that. It's a big responsibility.

2:08

S… Speaker 2 (Shan & Randall OG)

we've done it with police which makes us very different from a lot of our peers that that use security or that use a hybrid security and police and we're we're full police i think that does make us unique we have about 150 sworn police officers yeah and we we're self-sufficient we rarely if ever rely or utilize municipal

2:31

S… Speaker 2 (Shan & Randall OG)

Police departments are our partners in law enforcement, sheriff's office. We've got a great rapport with them. We work with them on a daily basis, but as far as.

2:40

S… Speaker 2 (Shan & Randall OG)

From training needs, I've got my own in-house instructors. From anything that happens, from accidents, traffic accidents on our campuses, to any type of criminal investigations, we're self-sufficient. And I've got my own people. I've got a lieutenant, a detective lieutenant, and a detective sergeant that work our investigations, the more complex ones. Of course, the patrol officers work the regular.

3:07

S… Speaker 2 (Shan & Randall OG)

crimes that are that are pretty straightforward but anything that needs uh you know the identity theft or uh or any type of major crimes uh we have uh we have people that can do that and i've hired i've been able to hire really good people uh from uh other organizations from different departments that uh some of them have retired and some have been in the middle of their careers when they uh they came on board with us and so uh i've been real proud of the team we've been able to assemble yeah i feel like

3:38

S… Speaker 1 (Shan & Randall OG)

Most individuals, and I've heard you talk about this as well, but most individuals think about hospitals and the places where they go get care.

3:49

S… Speaker 1 (Shan & Randall OG)

areas where you wouldn't anticipate that you have security needs of the kind that you do what drives the need to have a security team like the the kind that you have that you're responsible for and that you've built and what makes providing security and safety and policing in a healthcare environment different than you know what most of us kind of know in our you know personal lives in the general public

4:13

S… Speaker 2 (Shan & Randall OG)

Sure. I get the question a lot about, you know, you've got a police department in a hospital, and I said, believe me, with health care margins the way they are and reimbursements, you know, I run a pretty big budget with 150 sworn police officers and the needs, the capital that it takes to run a police department, just, you know, the fleet of vehicles, police cars we have. And so if it wasn't needed, that would be one line item that they could.

4:40

S… Speaker 2 (Shan & Randall OG)

They could slash pretty heavily, and unfortunately, the need has been there. You know, the policing, the difference in policing in a health care environment and policing on the street, a lot of similarities, but there are some differences. Community-oriented policing is certainly at the forefront for us.

5:00

S… Speaker 2 (Shan & Randall OG)

We try to make arrests as a last resort. A lot of times, you know, we'll have problems with a spouse of a lady who is in labor. And the last thing we want to do, even when they're out of line, is to arrest that subject and have them, remove them from the campus when they need to be there with their spouse. And the same thing with other visitors that are causing a problem. You know, we give them every opportunity.

5:26

S… Speaker 2 (Shan & Randall OG)

so that we don't have to ban them, we don't have to remove them or arrest them. So I think when you look at the differences, that's certainly one that the community oriented policing, we do a lot of talking, we try to deescalate, we do everything we can to avoid enforcement action. But of course, sometimes it's inevitable. Yeah. And, you know, I think one of the things that I keep hearing whenever we're

5:52

S… Speaker 1 (Shan & Randall OG)

working with organizations like yours and working with some of your peers is this concept of de-escalation is really at the heart of how to engage with the community. And one of the things that I think you touched on that I think is really important whenever we think about a healthcare setting is something that we hear all the time between the types of incidents and the reasons why someone might escalate.

6:21

S… Speaker 1 (Shan & Randall OG)

It's very nuanced. It's not very cut and dry. There might be medication involved, or sometimes there might be an underlying condition, and that's something that needs to be treated. Talk a little bit about everybody's role whenever incidents might happen, and describe what the role of your team is and what that partnership with the actual providers looks like. Well, you've certainly hit on a lot of the key points where

6:50

S… Speaker 2 (Shan & Randall OG)

The people that come to our hospitals and our campuses are there for a variety of different reasons. And the problems that we have, sometimes they're patients, sometimes they're visitors, sometimes they're even team members, our employees. The reasons, there's all kinds of reasons from someone just being in pain. And they're normally a very kind person, but when you're in...

7:14

S… Speaker 2 (Shan & Randall OG)

terrible pain you're not your best person so you know we have situations like that we have people that are concerned with the care that uh that they believe that their family is receiving rightfully or wrongfully you know it's uh you know they they feel that uh they get upset when they feel like that something's not being done that they would like to have or expect to be done so our role we try to let

7:38

S… Speaker 2 (Shan & Randall OG)

Of course, clinical staff de-escalate, manage to the extent they can, and they do a great job of that. But there's times when it's just not enough. They call us. They bring us in. And, you know, we sometimes showing up in the uniform, it's a very conspicuous police uniform. So there's no question about what our role is. And when we show up, either one of two things usually happen. Either it immediately gets better.

8:05

S… Speaker 2 (Shan & Randall OG)

Or it gets worse. And so we try to, that uniform can be a de-escalating factor, but other times it agitates. And we, again, do our best to try to talk down the situation, to communicate, to try to understand what the person's needs are. But there's a time when, you know, we often talk about the anatomy of an incident where you've got a simmer and things are, they're starting to...

8:33

S… Speaker 1 (Shan & Randall OG)

It could be a comment that is made or an action. And you first start to get those vibes that this might go in a bad direction. Let's just highlight the prevalence. I mean, I think everybody who is paying attention to health care security trends is pretty aware of some of the challenges that are going on in health care. And we're seeing it in mainstream media now.

8:57

S… Speaker 1 (Shan & Randall OG)

Tell us a little bit about, maybe even within the context of ECU, how has that shifted over time as well? You know, whether it's COVID, whether it's the nursing shortage, there could be a number of things, but there certainly has been at least a perceived culture shift where people in the last few years have become...

9:18

S… Speaker 2 (Shan & Randall OG)

more assaultive, less tolerant, less polite, and my officers are having more physical interactions than we have ever had in my tenure as police chief and with the department. I think our nurses are certainly seeing the same things, and caregivers, not just the nurses, the providers, the doctors, and the other care team, where they're having more assaults.

9:44

S… Speaker 2 (Shan & Randall OG)

more frequently and even more severely. The assaults are getting worse. I think our involvement in that has changed.

10:00

S… Speaker 2 (Shan & Randall OG)

decades there has been this idea that well that's just part of the job you know you work in an ER

10:07

S… Speaker 2 (Shan & Randall OG)

in the emergency department, and assaults are part of the job. And that culture shift has changed as well. It's not part of the job. And then now there's our organization, like many other health care systems, are posting signage at the entrances saying, you know, this is a care environment, and aggression, assaults, intimidation, verbal threats are not going to be tolerated. And I can tell you, that's a culture shift.

10:35

S… Speaker 1 (Shan & Randall OG)

But from where we were even a decade ago, where it was still considered as part of the job. So things are changing. Yeah. One of the things that I think is really interesting about what I hear you describing is, you know, there's a clear need.

10:50

S… Speaker 1 (Shan & Randall OG)

the investment in having a security team that could be responsive and support an organization of your size always in place or was continuing to be invested in. But then there still needs to be this collaboration in this group of stakeholders that's reiterating the commitment of the organization and the investment in the tools and the technologies to actually bring it all together.

11:19

S… Speaker 1 (Shan & Randall OG)

I think that's one of the places that I have seen in all the work that we've been doing as a unique aspect of ECU. How did you make those types of decisions? Who was involved? And take us through that journey that you're describing that I think has really made the kind of impact that you've seen over the last few years here.

11:40

S… Speaker 2 (Shan & Randall OG)

I fully admit we were late to the game in implementing that. A number of hospitals, a lot of healthcare systems, you know, had implemented that 20 years ago with check-in at your reception areas and your lobbies and people registering on a kiosk or having that.

12:00

S… Speaker 2 (Shan & Randall OG)

entering some demographic information and having that archive. That's relatively new for us. We were late coming to game, but we're in place now. So we started adding that and I'm feeling better and better about what we've done to protect our campuses and including the police force again.

12:19

S… Speaker 2 (Shan & Randall OG)

what most hospitals, many do not have. And I was still getting the pushback from clinical saying, you know, we want more. I saw part of the problem was, you know, all the cool things that we were adding, a lot of them were for the police department that were behind the scenes where the employees, they didn't see it. They didn't see the value and really didn't know about it. And so when we started looking at staffed arrests and started with this,

12:49

S… Speaker 2 (Shan & Randall OG)

this journey with Canopy, that's when things really changed because that was the first time that we had given our team members, we call our employees team members, given them something tangible that, yeah, the cool cameras, the facial rack and all, that's one thing, but that doesn't really matter to them. They want, what can you do to help me? And that's a normal, you know, certainly understand that. So when we started talking about solutions,

13:16

S… Speaker 2 (Shan & Randall OG)

We looked at a number of options, and we really knew what we wanted, and we brought the right teams in to evaluate. We had nursing, again, at the forefront. We had the senior leadership from the organization, and we had our partners with IT. Certainly, they're going to vet anything that we onboard, and aligning the right groups.

13:43

S… Speaker 1 (Shan & Randall OG)

to do the evaluation and the vetting and that's where we landed with Canopy and Canopy was absolutely the right solution for us. Well we appreciate hearing that and I think one of the things we're really proud of is the ability to make the kind of impact that we've had you know when you implemented your duress solution and when we ended up partnering together one of the things that I think you and your organization saw

14:13

S… Speaker 1 (Shan & Randall OG)

distinctively compared to you know others that we hear from is the importance of enlisting your peers and enlisting co-workers and sometimes that can be you know sort of a challenging thing to get your head around but to your point

14:28

S… Speaker 1 (Shan & Randall OG)

they're in the position to be able to respond faster because they're right next door. And the fourth things get out of control during that simmer. And by doing that, you're improving the perception of response time, the actual response time, the perception response time at the time that they need it the most. Maybe take us through.

14:50

S… Speaker 1 (Shan & Randall OG)

what it is that you saw that recognized that, and then if you were giving advice to others about bringing staff duress into their organizations, what are the...

15:00

S… Speaker 1 (Shan & Randall OG)

elements of a staffed arrest system that

15:02

S… Speaker 2 (Shan & Randall OG)

any organization should not negotiate or compromise on. Sure. Okay. When we started looking at staff to rest, there were a number of options and it really boiled down to what did we really want out of the system? And there were some systems that offered a mass notification and offered some other features. And what we were, I heard the message loud and clear from our clinical teams that, you know, what they wanted is wearable, a wearable solution that was

15:31

S… Speaker 2 (Shan & Randall OG)

It was functional, easy to operate, and it was simple. And when we started looking at all the options, Canopy really fit the bill for everything that we were looking for. You know, the simplicity, looking at infrastructure and people getting into a new product that you don't know.

15:54

S… Speaker 2 (Shan & Randall OG)

everything about and you wonder if we have all this infrastructure that we spend you know a lot of capital in investing in that and then 24 months what if we don't like it what if we want to change and you know that was another selling point for us with canopy is that the infrastructure is is plugging in a gateway into a receptacle and putting some outdoor gateways in our parking lots and

16:21

S… Speaker 2 (Shan & Randall OG)

a little more complicated than that, but that's generally what was done. And so it was the install for our nine hospitals went very quickly. We did it in the fall of one year for nine hospitals and it went really, really well. So I think looking when you're evaluating is really trying to understand exactly what do you want out of the system.

16:45

S… Speaker 2 (Shan & Randall OG)

and making sure that that you vet it properly for that and again for canopy we wanted a simple solution that was very reliable minimal infrastructure and that the staff could could really understand the functionality of it without you know being too complicated and it just to check all the boxes yeah when you think about staff duress systems and if you're giving advice to other organizations thinking about how to use

17:12

S… Speaker 1 (Shan & Randall OG)

staffed arrest technology as part of their security investments. How important is that proximity-based notification that we've been talking about? Is that a must-have? Is that something that you'd compromise on? How does that sort of change, you know, how does that factor into your decision making? The proximity alerts are a must-have, even to the point where when our organization was, we had already decided and committed to Canopy. And so that

17:41

S… Speaker 2 (Shan & Randall OG)

wasn't part of the decision making we were on board 100 well some of the questions came up what are we going to do as far as uh these proximity alerts and uh are we going to um well first what if you have someone that doesn't want to um yeah i don't care for staff to rest but i don't need one i only i work remote i come on site you know a couple times a year doesn't matter we made the organizational decision you know and unless you're a remote employee that never comes

18:11

S… Speaker 2 (Shan & Randall OG)

literally never if you come on our campus for a meeting even once a year then you're going to be issued a canopy and you're going to have to wear it's going to be required so we mandated that well then we also mandated that we were going to require we were going to opt everyone in on their canopy buttons to receive the proximity alerts so when a fellow co-worker presses their button then you'll receive that notification

18:38

S… Speaker 2 (Shan & Randall OG)

Now, if there's some team member that, for whatever reason, just doesn't want to receive those, they can opt out. But organizationally, everybody was put in, and it's on you to opt out of that system. So I think that really shows, as far as is that a must-have, that proximity alert.

18:59

S… Speaker 2 (Shan & Randall OG)

is non-negotiable. That has allowed us to really get that feeling of security, the help that that frontline worker really wanted. Even though knowing, hey, when I press this button, I have activated our police department. They're on the way. But two minutes, three minutes can seem like a lifetime. The proximity alerts, you're talking in most, all cases, seconds.

19:28

S… Speaker 1 (Shan & Randall OG)

And you might have a half a dozen people or more there. Yeah. In this environment, what you see is a real partnership around between leadership and the team members and security to ultimately create an environment that can do best for why you're there in the first place, which is to take care of patients and some of these types of incidents while unfortunate.

19:50

S… Speaker 1 (Shan & Randall OG)

you know, if we can resolve them sooner and earlier before they get out of control, it creates a better environment for everybody. And it's amazing to hear your...

20:00

S… Speaker 1 (Shan & Randall OG)

investments that you made all around that are really at the leading sort of edge of what other healthcare organizations can be doing. I think, you know, what advice do you have for other organizations as they're kind of in the middle of their journeys right now? Sure. The onboarding process, before we got to the onboarding process, we really had to do that self-evaluation and to see, I guess it was a recognition of the workplace violence is a real

20:28

S… Speaker 2 (Shan & Randall OG)

issue that needs to be dealt with. We've had a police force. We've had these other security controls in place for years and decades in some cases. And what we had always done is not working now. So we needed a new course of action. So I think really doing that self-evaluation and really identifying what your needs are, where are your problems, what technologies do you currently have?

20:57

S… Speaker 2 (Shan & Randall OG)

what needs to be scrapped. And we did a rip out and replacement of several of our technologies. And that is, I mean, sometimes it's hard to do, but when you look at the overall benefit, it's worth the investment. So my advice to other healthcare systems is certainly to do a very good evaluation, determine what your needs are, and then...

21:24

S… Speaker 2 (Shan & Randall OG)

as important as anything, is the relationships with involving the entity leadership and the COOs, the CFOs, the chief nursing officers, and getting the support from them, getting an executive sponsor when you start down this journey to have somebody that can really continue to push this to the top and to keep it on the forefront.

21:50

S… Speaker 2 (Shan & Randall OG)

The marketing team, I think I've mentioned before, our communications and marketing group, our MarCom, really was instrumental in telling our story, getting out the good news of the plans that we had, the things that we were doing, what was upcoming, and really just putting it out there in every venue and forum.

22:13

S… Speaker 2 (Shan & Randall OG)

that they can provide, you know, a lot more than I could do. As the chief, you know, I could send out some emails, system-wide emails. You know, I could attend some town halls and share, but I don't have the power that the marketing team has. And so, you know, I think, you know, lastly for advice is a lot of us are investing in technologies that have really changed.

22:41

S… Speaker 2 (Shan & Randall OG)

the job that we're doing in protecting our people and our campuses and those technologies are are wonderful but I think the dividends that you receive on when you're putting something tangible in your team members and your employees hands and really I think that drove it home for our people in showing

23:04

S… Speaker 1 (Shan & Randall OG)

that the organization truly cared about their safety to the point where they're making this investment in wearable safety. We've talked a lot about the organizational, the potential organizational pushback to sending alerts and involving coworkers in what might be challenging situations. One of the observations that we've made in the work that we've done is that

23:34

S… Speaker 1 (Shan & Randall OG)

staff and healthcare workers, they actually tend to feel great about an opportunity to support their coworkers whenever situations either get avoided or they're able to deescalate them before they really get out of control. Tell us about whether some of the concerns about pushback have shown up for you or what some of the feedback from your team members has been.

24:00

S… Speaker 2 (Shan & Randall OG)

Great question. It was on our minds when we were onboarding, and there were some unknowns we just didn't know. We were committed to Canopy. We knew it was the right solution for us, felt like it was the right solution for us, but there were still some things that we were wondering, how is all that going to play out? And we have...

24:19

S… Speaker 2 (Shan & Randall OG)

remarkably had little to no pushback at all. I don't know of any cases. I'm sure there's some people that have opted out, but we didn't know what that opt-out percentage was going to be. Is it going to be 20%, 30% of our workforce? And those numbers have been nominal. It's been minimal, almost nothing. As far as the concern, another concern that people did have when we were talking about the solution that was coming.

24:48

S… Speaker 2 (Shan & Randall OG)

is the whole idea of am I going to be tracked? And we were able to reassure, no, to the police department, you're not going to have that visibility.

25:00

S… Speaker 2 (Shan & Randall OG)

until you press your button. And when you press your button, I don't think anyone's going to complain about the police department knowing where you are. Of course, they're worried about, is my manager, is management going to be able to track me if I'm supposed to be on the unit and I've taken an extended break? And none of those concerns have come to fruition. There were questions that were being asked when we were...

25:22

S… Speaker 2 (Shan & Randall OG)

we're talking about the product introducing it to our organization when our hospital presidents were talking about it because they were engaged from the beginning and and so we started telling the story early and when we started going down the road then yeah there were questions about and we were quickly able to calm any any concerns that's great can you maybe describe some of the either the anecdotes or stories that you've already heard across your organization from

25:49

S… Speaker 1 (Shan & Randall OG)

uh staff duress and how does that compare to other forms of security you know impact of security technology investments that you've made

25:57

S… Speaker 2 (Shan & Randall OG)

So comparison to other technologies we've added, we rarely get any stories from our other technologies. Again, from the police department's perspective, I'm proud of them, and they've done great things. Some of these technologies we use daily, and they really allowed us to better secure our campuses and better do our jobs. But I don't get the accolades. I don't get the...

26:20

S… Speaker 2 (Shan & Randall OG)

I don't get the anecdotes. I don't get the feedback. And some canopy stores, it's been incredible. In one of our hospitals, we rolled it out on a Monday morning, 9 o'clock at all the different departments. We had a very organized deployment for our canopy buttons. You come down and you're issued your buttons. The managers pick them up, take them back. And so it was...

26:48

S… Speaker 2 (Shan & Randall OG)

24 hours later after our rollout on Tuesday morning, we had a bad incident. We had a violent attack on a care partner. It was in a hallway and it was actually in a, we had two cameras in very close proximity that viewed and recorded the whole incident. And the person was violently, this employee was violently attacked by a

27:17

S… Speaker 2 (Shan & Randall OG)

complete caught off guard by a patient that just completely attacked her and she immediately went down an employee that was just feet away

27:30

S… Speaker 2 (Shan & Randall OG)

pressed their canopy button that was 24 hours old. And the police officers, you see the uniforms roll in almost immediately. But that was, you think about a story like that, that I, as the police chief, would be very anxious to tell and to share with the entity leadership. And I was, but that wasn't what happened.

27:52

S… Speaker 2 (Shan & Randall OG)

organizational leadership, the presidents, they were telling that story. Not two days later, it was going all over the health care system at the other hospitals that were not even a part of that. And the story was being told by leadership, not by the police department. I thought that was really telling. It's our story. We're the police department, and normally we're trying to convince the senior leadership, say, hey, look what happened. Look what we were able to do.

28:21

S… Speaker 1 (Shan & Randall OG)

to show the value of our technologies and our people. And we didn't have to tell the story. They were telling it themselves. Yeah. As we wrap up, first of all, thank you so much for all the time. Tell us a little bit about what your experience was working with the Canopy team and how you feel about how the project went. And tell us about what your hopes are for the future and where you'd like to see things go.

28:43

S… Speaker 2 (Shan & Randall OG)

Sure. We started on this journey with once we made the decision that Canopy was our solution for our health care system. And from the very beginning, it went really well. I think we did do a lot of pre-planning using in advance, getting the information out to.

29:03

S… Speaker 2 (Shan & Randall OG)

a lot of our teams and uh canopy was there to support us the whole way you know we were doing some things that uh that the canopy team said well other this is the first time we've seen this i think it's great you know that your organization is is trying this approach and so

29:20

S… Speaker 2 (Shan & Randall OG)

And I think there was so much involvement. We were really including our executive team and all these other partners to a greater extent than maybe some other organizations. And then the marketing campaign, the blitz we were putting out, that was something that our Canopy team members said that they hadn't seen a lot in other organizations. And so everything we were asking them to do,

29:49

S… Speaker 2 (Shan & Randall OG)

Your team and canopy to do things that you hadn't necessarily done at other organizations and you welcomed every every question every

30:00

S… Speaker 1 (Shan & Randall OG)

request we had and the partnership has been great. We're constantly looking at things that we would like to do, future endeavors. We had a need for

30:15

S… Speaker 1 (Shan & Randall OG)

At our flagship hospital, we've got a full communications dispatch center where those canopy alarms were coming in. That worked really, really well. At some of our smaller hospitals, we didn't have that set up yet. And so we were looking for an alternate solution, and Canopy said, we can build you one and built this app, this remote app for officers that are...

30:41

S… Speaker 1 (Shan & Randall OG)

that are not getting dispatched out of a command center or dispatch center, that they can receive those alerts directly on their mobile devices. And so we've already asked for new tech from Canopy, and it was built on the spot. There's a lot of, we're excited about what's to come with any type of future innovation. I appreciate you.

31:07

S… Speaker 2 (Shan & Randall OG)

taking time out of your busy schedule. I know it will be influential to other organizations that are struggling with the same challenges. And we feel grateful for the opportunity to support you in all of the amazing, innovative work that you guys are doing. And thank you for taking the time to share all these details. Very welcome. Glad to be here. Right on. Thank you.

Shan & Randall OG

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