Tulsa shooting highlights vulnerability of hospitals

Hospitals, like schools, are not typically designed to guard against the threat of a determined gunman entering the building to take lives.

The vulnerability of health care facilities was highlighted by a shooter who killed four people and then himself Wednesday at a hospital in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The assailant got inside a building on the Saint Francis Hospital campus with little trouble, just hours after buying an ARstyle rifle, authorities said.

Here’s a look at what’s known about security at the Tulsa facility and other American hospitals:

Did the gunman have to pass through security?

No, the 45-year-old man identified as the shooter, Michael Louis, of Muskogee, Oklahoma, parked his car in an adjoining garage, then went through unlocked doors into the medical building, authorities said.

“It is an entry that is open to the public,” Tulsa Police Chief Wendell Franklin told reporters Thursday. “He was able to walk in without any type of challenge.”

It was a short walk from that entrance to the office area where Louis fatally shot his primary target, Dr. Preston Phillips. Police said Phillips recently performed surgery on Louis and that Louis blamed the doctor for chronic pain he still suffered.

Once Louis got in, “he began firing at anyone who was in his way,” Franklin said. At least one person holding a door open for others to escape was killed.

Could better security have stopped the shooter?

The president and CEO of Saint Francis Health System said nothing can stop somebody with guns “hellbent on causing harm.”

Dr. Cliff Robertson did not provide details about hospital security. He said the facility has procedures to deal with “difficult, unhappy patients,” though he did not elaborate.

Hospital officials planned to review their security procedures in the days ahead. There “will be a thousand questions” to answer regarding the shooting, Robertson said.

From official accounts, the reaction time of officers could not have been much better. Wendell said officers responded to the shooting within minutes and that the shooter apparently killed himself as police approached.

Is it standard for hospitals to leave some entryways open?

Yes, because some urgent medical situations require patients to be moved quickly. But some hospitals, especially ones that have dealt with violence on their grounds, have upgraded security in recent years.

Mercy Hospital in Chicago beefed up security after a 2019 attack in which a man fatally shot an attending physician who was his ex-fiance in the parking lot. He then entered the hospital, where he shot and killed a pharmacy resident and a police officer before he was fatally shot himself.