Who gets to see healthcare body-worn camera footage in the US?
Healthcare workers in the United States face violence at alarming rates—five times more frequently than employees in other industries. To address this crisis, security managers in healthcare deploy body-worn cameras (BWCs).
Studies show that BWCs decrease threatening behavior and de-escalate incidents. They have broad, high-variety, and moving scenes, including bystander patients, or worker interactions— which is particularly useful when employee behavior is questioned.
When incidents occur, security teams face complex decisions about sharing BWC footage while complying with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). How can healthcare organizations govern who can access and share BWC footage to balance workplace security with patient confidentiality?
The current challenge
Healthcare organizations face a delicate balancing act between safety needs and privacy requirements when managing BWC footage. These guidelines depend on the overarching organizational strategy, which aligns business objectives and culture.
For example, an emergency department might activate cameras only during potentially aggressive incidents, or another facility might record routine interactions with patient consent to improve service quality.
The International Association for Healthcare Security and Safety (IAHSS) Foundation emphasizes that healthcare businesses must establish management guidelines. These include circumstances around recording and releasing BWC footage.
While each healthcare organization may approach BWC usage differently, all face common decisions about managing roles and responsibilities. To address these challenges, healthcare organizations need a clear framework for BWC governance.
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Critical decision points for BWCs in US Healthcare
Critical decision points about healthcare roles and responsibilities center around who creates, administers, and has access to the BWC recordings. To carefully select this kind of cross-functional team, critical stakeholders need to be in conversation, including:
Senior and clinical leadership
Security personnel
Risk management and legal representatives
Privacy professionals
IT specialists
Public Relations staff
Human Resources personnel
For each of these roles, organizations must establish clear operational parameters around time, meeting frequency, reporting structure, and coordination with other departments in the organization.
Healthcare centers should consider their existing governance structures and extend roles that naturally fit when deciding on this protocol. For example, a security manager, who handles other privacy protection measures may be the best person to redact BWC video footage before release, to protect bystanders.
After assessing existing resources, the critical team of healthcare stakeholders needs to make decisions on the following:
Internal access and review: Establishing recording criteria, storage access, and redaction procedures.
External access management: Handling requests from partner organizations while maintaining security.
Privacy protection: Ensuring proper compliance with HIPAA, including proper patient notification and consent processes.
Benefits of BWCs in the U.S. Healthcare
When properly managed with clear governance structures, BWCs offer several crucial advantages to healthcare settings, including better patient outcomes - such as a reduction in using tranquilizers, other restraints on patients and the number of patient compliants.
BWCs are also a way to provide increased protection for emergency department staff during high-risk encounters and are proven to deescalate incidents, with some facilities reporting a nearly 50% reduction in incident escalations.
BWC footage can also provide stronger legal compliance, and better accountability since evidence is captured to help settle disputes. Furthermore, footage can help with staff training to better identify and handle incidents.
Success depends on alignment of BWC policies with the organizational culture and having clear communications with critical stakeholders.
As healthcare organizations increasingly adopt BWC technology to protect their workers, the complexity of managing video footage will grow. Success depends on establishing clear governance structures that balance workplace safety with patient privacy.
By carefully defining roles and responsibilities across departments, healthcare organizations can create sustainable processes for managing BWC footage while maintaining compliance with privacy regulations.
Organizations will need scalable solutions for managing and protecting sensitive data. Automated redaction tools, such as Pimloc’s Secure Redact can help healthcare organizations efficiently manage BWC footage, balancing security and privacy.