Lee Memorial Health Systems is stepping up its security this month in the wake of several shootings that have garnered national attention.
Visitors to Lee Memorial’s downtown Fort Myers campus will be issued a temporary ID badge from now on. It’s part of an effort to make the hospital safer.
The hospital is also putting security guards at its entrances.
Kat Welch, a spokesperson for Lee Memorial Health Systems, said the hospital group has been considering adding more security measures due to increased gun violence nationwide.
“We are going to put this in our other hospitals but we started at Lee Memorial because we have the trauma center there—with that, sometimes we treat people of violent crime,” she explained. “It’s just another security measure to keep everybody safer: employees, visitors, patients.”
The new ID system is similar to what is used in schools and cruise ships: rapidly printed stickers with a picture.
Gulf Coast Medical Center in Fort Myers will be the next hospital to implement the new system.