Let's say hypothetically that where you work has a policy change, that on hospital duty you have one armed officer, and one unarmed officer(handler). The discussion amongst the coworkers is where should the armed officer be positioned, in the room, or outside the room. What is your opinions on this.
Correction officers, the hospital wants to dictate officer placement.
Now retired but for almost 7 years, one of my several jobs with CA state government was working for Licensing & Certifications as federally certified Health Care Facilities Surveyor and conducted state licensing and federal certification surveys (I was trained and certified to survey hospitals, ambulatory surgical centers, clinics, nursing homes, intermediate care facilities, dialysis centers and hospice - Yeah, I was busy).
About 10 years ago, after hurricane Katrina and other bad hurricanes/natural disasters where hospitals and healthcare facilities were found without adequate emergency response plans/supplies/training, a federal mandate came down requiring surveying agencies to check and verify adequacy of emergency response of the health care facility, including security and armed intruder/active shooter response, to ensure the safety/security/food/water not only to the patients/residents but also to the staff and visitors and to issue an "Immediate Jeopardy" to the facility if there were any deficiencies found. The feds were serious as many people died because of it (or lack there of).
I was a survey team leader of a Critical Access Hospital where the hospital disbanded the security staff (To save money, likely) and expected the hospital/nursing staff to respond to intruder/disruptive patient/active shooter emergencies (And who's going to watch their patients?).
When I questioned the hospital managers/staff what they were trained to do, their responses were not adequate/acceptable. There were many other critical deficiencies found and the survey team declared an Immediate Jeopardy where the hospital had to immediately respond and correct the identified deficiencies. Their response was to reestablish hospital security staff and proper gear/equipment. The hospital administrator was fired soon after the survey.
Long story short, several months later a coworker who lived by the hospital told me that an active shooter with a shotgun barged into the hospital lobby. Imagine if nurses had to respond to the active shooter?
Anyway, as to OP's question, during a survey the hospital administrator or designee has to provide evidence of all emergency plans, procedures, inventory list and training records, to include contingency plans, etc. to prove the hospital is adequately prepared to ensure the safety and security of the patients, staff and visitors. The policy change should be in response to any deficiency found during QA/self audit or after a survey finding but sounds like that may not be the case.
Usually, when police department or prison provide security/escort to suspects/inmates inside the hospital, a prior written agreement is made between the hospital and prison (Which the survey team can review if necessary) but the details of suspect/inmate handling and control procedures including use of force/chemical agents are delegated to the police/prison staff according to their departmental policies and procedures and training. But ultimately, it's the responsibility of the officers to ensure the safety and security of the area they are assigned to, according to their department's policy and procedures, so they should be allowed to determine how best to secure the area/inmate.
If the hospital wanted to dictate officer placement, they may not wanted correctional officers visible outside the inmate's room (My guess) but if I was surveying the hospital, I would pose the worst case scenario possible and ask for the agreement between hospital and prison and interview staff/correctional officers to see if adequacy existed to ensure safety and security of the area/inmate. If changes were made to improve "appearance" but sacrificed safety and security of the area/inmate, this concern would be brought to the hospital administrator or designee for them to explain why. While surveyors are tasked to identify "actual" problems, we also look for "potential" problems and when found, will bring to hospital's attention on a "FYI" basis and not include in the written report of findings.
I always surveyed with the notion that staff working at the lowest level often know more than management and hold the solutions/answers to the problems and conveyed their concerns/understanding of problems to management as potential problem FYIs as I would sometimes return later to the same facility to find these "potential" problems have indeed become "actual" problems.
Admin's stance is, it's their building so we follow their rules.
The hospital we use has decided that they don't want firearms to be seen by the public.
OK, just read this.
Well, is that going to help or not help the goal of ensuring the safety and security of the hospital?
I would pose the worst case scenario and have hospital management explain as open display of firearms can work to deter "potential" problems. I would pose external threats in additional to internal threat of the inmate getting loose. If inmate's presence was leaked (people talk) and his homies/fellow gang members wanted to break him out, how would armed officers inside the room help deter the attack? It would seem armed officers outside the room could provide not only deterrence but quicker armed response (if necessary).
Due to this and other reasons, many hospitals have built isolated high security wings where inmates are housed like inside the prison and correctional officers are free to move without being seen by the public (requires authorized access for anyone to enter the high security wing).
Sounds like the correctional officers need to elevate the issue to prison management and have them talk with the hospital management.
I hope this helped.