Don MacAlister, CHPA, Chief Operating Officer & past member of the IAHSS Board of Directors - played a lead role in transitioning operations to PalAmerican Security in 2016. Today he has an executive role in strategically supporting EVP, Jason Begin and VP Healthcare, Jeff Young, particularly as it relates to our healthcare business.
What initially drew you to work within the security industry:
I was a very young man looking for work and found myself working in a maximum security prison at the age of 21. Now 41 years later, after a career that included campus security following my corrections experience, I view my nearly 30 years in healthcare security as the spark that ignited my passion for security; the commitment to a safe environment for people to receive care that has never left me. In my current role, I have had the opportunity to experience the security profession in almost every conceivable setting, and it has been rewarding in every sense.
What do you hope to achieve within the healthcare division for PalAmerican:
We want PalAmerican to be the best security company in the US – bar none. Our goal is to build on our experience from more than 30 years in the healthcare security field, take our industry leading practices and learnings from our work in the US and Canada, and deliver a security program that takes the industry by storm and firmly places PalAmerican as the undisputed service provider of choice for healthcare security.
Where do you see the future of healthcare security going and what are some of the
main challenges:
Healthcare security has grown as a profession by leaps and bounds in the more than three decades that span my career. Security folks like to talk about technology and I think that robotics and AI will play an even greater role in security healthcare settings in the very near future. Analytics must also be an area of focus for this industry moving forward – we must be able to demonstrate not only value for spend but qualitative value that supports patient care as well. I see the industry continuing to grow, and more bright young professional women and men being drawn to it. Increasingly healthcare security leaders must be business savvy and be able to understand healthcare as much or more than they understand security. PalAmerican is firmly connected to these trends in our healthcare security industry leadership role.
What inspired you to Co-Author the textbook: Hospital and Healthcare Security, 6th Edition that would serve as a guide to current and future leaders in this field:
I was honored to be asked by my good friend and colleague, Tony York to write this important book with him. Some of my inspiration came from my mother who always wanted me to write but sadly passed away before the book was published. However, I saw writing about healthcare security as a way to give back to a profession that has been so good to me, and without question, researching and writing the book helped me learn even more about an industry I had been immersed in for many years. Finally, I was able to bring a bit of an international perspective to the areas of focus in the book and ensure PalAmerican was further positioned as a thought leader in this field.