Ask a nurse what slows her down on a shift, and slow or dropped Wi-Fi often makes the list. Tablets that freeze during medication passes, laptops on carts that lose connection near the end of a hallway, and residents or families who cannot get online all trace back to the same cause: wireless networks that were never planned for how a care facility really works.
Building materials, resident room layouts, and the growing number of connected devices make senior-living environments harder than a typical office. A little planning goes a long way.
Several features of your building work against wireless signals:
Long hallways with rooms on both sides, so signals must pass through walls
Concrete, brick, metal framing, and mirrors that reflect or absorb signals
Fire doors and fire-rated walls, which are dense by design
Heavy use of mobile devices in motion, such as carts and tablets
Many device types competing for the same airwaves, from phones to monitors to smart TVs
A single access point in a hallway ceiling will often give a good signal in the hallway and a poor one inside the rooms.
A site survey measures real signal strength and interference in your building. Done before installation, it tells you how many access points you need and where to place them. Done afterward, it confirms the results. Ask whoever designs your network to walk the whole building, including:
Resident rooms, bathrooms and the farthest corners of each wing
Nursing stations, med rooms and charting areas
Dining rooms, activity rooms and therapy gyms
Outdoor patios if staff or residents use them
Offices and the business area
The survey should be repeated after major changes, such as moving walls or adding a wing.
A strong signal bar does not guarantee good performance. Each access point can only serve so many devices at once. Count the devices you expect in each area at peak times, including:
Staff tablets, laptops and workstations on wheels
Wireless medication or vital sign devices, if used
Resident and guest devices
Smart TVs, tablets for activities, and entertainment streaming
Building systems such as thermostats, door locks or cameras on Wi-Fi
Dining rooms and activity rooms may need extra capacity during events, when many phones and tablets connect at once.
Security and performance both improve when you divide traffic into different wireless networks, often called SSIDs, tied to separate network segments.
Staff network: secured with strong authentication, used for work devices that access resident information.
Guest and resident network: isolated from everything internal, with bandwidth limits so streaming does not crowd out clinical systems.
Device network: for medical equipment, printers and building systems, with restricted access.
Never let a guest or resident device share a network with the systems that hold protected health information. Under the HIPAA Security Rule, transmission security and access controls are part of the safeguards you are expected to address.
Use WPA2 or WPA3 encryption on every network, never an open network for staff.
Prefer individual logins or certificates for staff over one shared password that everyone knows and nobody changes.
Change default administrator passwords on access points and controllers.
Keep access point firmware updated.
Turn off older, weak settings that exist only for compatibility with ancient devices, or isolate those devices.
Monitor for rogue access points that someone plugged in without approval.
Wi-Fi is only as good as what is behind it. Each access point needs a reliable wired connection, adequate power through Power over Ethernet switches, and an internet connection large enough for the load. Check the following:
Cabling quality and age to each access point
Switch capacity and PoE power budget
Internet bandwidth during busy hours
Backup power for network equipment, so a short outage does not drop the whole building
The people who know where Wi-Fi fails are the ones walking the halls. Ask aides, nurses and therapists to note locations where connections drop and the time of day. A simple log kept for two weeks can pinpoint trouble spots better than guesswork.
Good wireless is usually the result of a survey, a sensible design and ongoing monitoring rather than a bigger router. UnityCare IT can assess your current Wi-Fi, map trouble spots and recommend upgrades sized to your building and your care workflows.
Call or text: 405-285-3845
New customers: start@unitycareit.com
Existing customers: support@unitycareit.com
Address: UnityCare Technologies, 2524 N Broadway Ste 554, PMB 947974, Edmond, Oklahoma 73034-4172