“Kontakt.io has been a responsive and engaged partner throughout our deployment, from pilot to roll-out. Their team is quick to assist, collaborative, and hands-on, and their solution integrated well with our existing infrastructure. It’s scalable across departments and facilities, and their product roadmap reflects a thoughtful, innovative approach to solving real-world challenges.”
— Les Boyer, Senior IT Strategy and Cybersecurity Director at Genesis HealthCare System
Like many healthcare systems nationwide, Genesis HealthCare System was seeing a troubling rise in workplace violence incidents. With over 4,500 employees and serving southeastern Ohio, Genesis operates two hospitals—in Zanesville and Coshocton—and a free-standing emergency department in Perry County, along with a broad network of outpatient care sites across six counties, leadership understood that the safety and confidence of their clinical staff was paramount — not only for retention and morale, but for ensuring high-quality care delivery.
What Genesis needed was more than a point solution. They were looking for a long-term partner who could provide scalable, intelligent safety infrastructure without adding IT burden or requiring extensive hardware overhauls. The team was especially mindful of how difficult it can be to implement new technology systemwide while maintaining daily operations and staying within budget.
After Genesis HealthCare System selected Kontakt.io as the vendor of choice, they rolled out an initial 30-day pilot that not only proved the ease of implementation and success of the Staff Safety solution, but also established trust in Kontakt.io as a technology partner. Deploying first in the Emergency Department and Critical Access facilities — where duress events were most frequent, frontline staff received wearable panic buttons powered by BLE and RTLS technology, enabling staff to send instant security alerts of their real-time location when they felt at risk.
The results? What used to take minutes — radio calls, security dispatch, location guesswork — now happens in seconds. Incidents are de-escalated before they turn violent. Nurses feel safer because they know help is on the way at the press of a button. In moments of crisis, this near-instant alert isn’t just powering a faster response. It’s a lifeline: Staff press the badge button, location alert pings, and responders are dispatched. The technology works. The response is automatic. And safety is no longer a question.
Based on that early success, Genesis HealthCare System expanded the solution across more units and facilities across Ohio. Leveraging Kontakt.io’s single, shared cloud-managed platform across the entire infrastructure, Genesis HealthCase System not only expanded protection to thousands of staff members but also reduced the total cost of ownership and unlocked nearly immediate ROI — all without overburdening internal IT and operations teams.
“This technology is doing exactly what it promised — it’s real-time, it’s wearable, and it’s making a real impact. We’re not just seeing the difference in efficiency, we’re beginning to hear it from the staff. They are feeling safer and beginning to trust that help is just the push of a button away.”
— Heath Williams, Director of Emergency Services at Genesis HealthCare System
“The efficient information provided by Kontakt software and communicated by CAS Dispatch to our Police/Security officers expedite the response and resolution and often saves our patient care staff from potential violence exposure or injury. The initiation of a response is seconds versus what use to be minutes.”
— Eric C. King Director of Public Safety at Genesis HealthCare System
Download the PDF: Genesis HealthCare System Redefining WPV Incident Response
