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SALT LAKE CITY -- Two more hospitals in Utah now have a new safety system to protect babies and children.
A new baby girl has quite the bling on her ankle. It's an electronic monitoring device called the Hugs Infant Protection System. If anyone tampers with the anklet or tries to leave with the baby, alarms go off everywhere.
Sandy Osmond is the director of women's services at St Mark's Hospital. She said, "(It) totally closes down the building, and notifies the whole hospital. The whole hospital goes into alert until it's cleared overhead that baby is fine."
Osmond says they've had HUGS since 2001; their sister hospitals, Ogden Regional Medical Center and Brigham City Community Hospital, just added the system as well.
She said, "It's a really good system, but it is only a tool. The employees are also very well trained in what suspicious behavior to look for."
These hospitals and others around the state also have identifying tags on both mother and baby, which employees constantly check to make sure they match.
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children found that 90 percent of infant abductions from health care facilities were through unmonitored exits. Osmond says employees watch exits closely.
"Even though we have this system that shuts the doors down, everybody is still trained to stand at a door," she said. "They are trained to even ask people nicely if they can look into a big bag (for a hidden baby). The other day a nurse asked to look in a big bouquet of flowers."
Osmond said the alarms can go off if a parent or nurse walks too close to an exit while holding a baby. They've also had alarms go off when a parent (she blames the dads) tries to loosen or tighten the ankle monitor.
Osmond says they have never had an attempted abduction from St Mark's, but they hold many drills.
"If it happens at our hospital, it happens to our community. It's the same when something happened at another hospital in our valley. It was almost as painful for us because those are our babies no matter which hospital you are at."
E-mail: mrichards@ksl.com
