Healthcare Security

Weapons Detection Systems for Hospitals Hospital Weapons Detection Systems, the California Hospital Weapons Detection Law, and What Camera AI Covers

Hospitals are buying two different things and the industry keeps calling both of them "weapons detection." One is automated screening at an entrance, which is what California AB 2975 will require. The other is AI that watches the cameras you already own across the rest of the campus. You need to know which one a vendor is selling you before you sign. We sell the second kind, and this page is explicit about what it does not do.

Last updated July 2026

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Runs on any ONVIF or RTSP camera already installed. Visible-weapon alerts plus intrusion, loitering, vehicles, plates, and plain-English video search.

AB 2975 at a glance

Signed: Sept 27, 2024
Cal/OSHA standard due: March 1, 2027
Hospital deadline: Within 90 days after
Entrances covered: Main, ED, L and D
Camera AI qualifies?: No, it is not screening

In short

A weapons detection system for a hospital is either an automated screening device at an entrance that scans a person's body for concealed weapons, or camera-based AI that flags a visible firearm anywhere a camera can see. California AB 2975 requires the first kind at three named entrances. It does not accept the second kind as a substitute, and no honest vendor should tell you otherwise. Most hospitals end up buying both, because entrance screening covers the doors and camera AI covers the parking structures, ambulance bays, perimeter, and corridors that screening never touches.

Correction: the deadline almost everyone prints is wrong

March 1, 2027 Is Not the Date Your Hospital Has to Comply

Search for AB 2975 and you will read, on vendor page after vendor page, that California hospitals must have weapons detection installed by March 1, 2027. That is not what the law says. March 1, 2027 is the deadline for the Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board to finalize its amended standard. Hospitals then comply on a date the board selects, which must fall within 90 days of the standard being finalized.

The California Hospital Association states it plainly in its own member FAQ: the bill requires "OSHSB to finalize these amended standards by March 1, 2027" and "hospitals to comply on or before a date selected by OSHSB that must be within 90 days of OSHSB finalizing the standards." Two different dates, and the one that binds your facility has not been set yet.

This matters for procurement, not pedantry. If a rep tells you that you are already behind on a March 2027 deadline, they are compressing your timeline with a date that does not exist. The real constraint is that the board has not yet published which device types it will accept, so nobody can sell you a system that is certified AB 2975 compliant today. What you can do now is measure your entrances, work out whether you fall into one of the handheld exemptions, and budget for the staffing, because the staffing is the part that surprises people.

Claims we will not print

Any statement that our software, or any camera-based product, satisfies AB 2975.
A hospital compliance date, because the standards board has not selected one.
A list of "approved" devices, because the approved list does not exist yet.
An accuracy percentage for concealed-weapon screening, which is not what camera AI does.

What the California Hospital Weapons Detection Law Actually Requires

AB 2975 (Gipson) was chaptered on September 27, 2024 and amends Labor Code section 6401.8. It directs Cal/OSHA's standards board to fold weapon screening into the existing Workplace Violence Prevention in Health Care standard. Every item below comes from the bill text and the California Hospital Association's December 2024 member FAQ.

Three named entrances

Screening must sit at the main public entrance (the single entrance the hospital designates as the primary access point for patients and visitors), the emergency department entrance, and the labor and delivery entrance if it is separately accessible to the public. Ambulance entrances are not included.

Automated body screening

The device must automatically screen a person's body and identify instruments capable of inflicting death or serious bodily injury. This is the phrase that rules out camera analytics: the statute is describing a screening portal a person walks through, not software watching a hallway.

Wands cannot be the primary device

Most hospitals may not use a handheld weapon detection device as their sole or primary screening device. Every hospital may still use wands as a secondary device after a primary alarm, which is how nearly all real deployments run.

Dedicated non-clinical staff

A hospital must assign designated staff, other than a health care provider, to implement the policy and to monitor and operate the device. They must be present at all times the entrance is open to the public. For a 24/7 emergency department entrance that is a round-the-clock post.

Eight hours of training minimum

Anyone overseeing the screening policy needs at least eight hours covering response procedures when a weapon is found, device operation, de-escalation, and implicit bias. The hospital chooses the modality as long as the hours and topics are covered.

Badged staff are exempt

Current hospital employees and health care providers wearing a hospital identification badge are excluded from screening. That single line changes your throughput math more than any device spec, because staff are the largest share of people crossing those doors.

Refusal protocols required

The policy must set reasonable protocols for alternative search and screening for patients, families, or visitors who refuse to be screened. Refusal cannot become a denial of care.

Posted notice, no denial of care

Hospitals must post a conspicuous notice within reasonable proximity of screened public entrances stating that screening occurs and that no person will be refused medical care under EMTALA. Size and manner will be set by the standards board.

No confiscation mandate

AB 2975 does not require hospitals to store or seize weapons. The policy must describe the response, including letting someone dispose of the item and then re-enter the facility.

Who is covered, and who can still use a wand

All hospitals licensed under Health and Safety Code section 1250 (a), (b), or (f) must comply, except facilities run by the California Department of State Hospitals, the Department of Developmental Services, and the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. Three categories may use a handheld device as their primary instrument: small and rural hospitals as defined under the Small and Rural Hospital Relief Program, hospitals that exclusively provide extended care to patients with complex medical and rehabilitative needs (such as federally certified long-term care hospitals and inpatient rehabilitation facilities), and individual entrances where spacing limitations mean a walk-through unit would violate Title 24 of the California Code of Regulations.

If you operate outside California, none of this binds you today. It is still worth reading, because state hospital security mandates tend to travel and this is the most detailed template on the books.

Entrance Screening vs Camera AI: the Honest Comparison

These are not competing products. They fail in opposite places, which is why large health systems run both. We sell the right-hand column, and the table concedes every row where the left-hand column wins.

Dimension	Entrance screening (Evolv, CEIA, Metrasens, Garrett)	Camera AI (Surveillant, ZeroEyes, Omnilert, Scylla)
Concealed weapons	Yes. This is the entire point of the category.	No. A gun in a bag or waistband has no visual signature.
Satisfies AB 2975	Yes, this is the device class the statute describes.	No. Camera analytics do not automatically screen a body.
Coverage area	Three doorways. Nothing beyond the portal.	Every camera on the property, indoors and outdoors.
Parking structures and ambulance bays	Not covered. Ambulance entrances are exempt from the mandate.	Covered wherever a camera already looks.
Detects a drawn weapon in a corridor	No. Screening already happened at the door.	Yes, that is the primary use case.
Staffing burden	High. Dedicated non-clinical staff at every open entrance, 24/7 for the ED.	None added. Alerts route to the existing security desk or phones.
Capital cost	Portal hardware plus entrance reconfiguration, often Title 24 work.	Software on existing cameras. No new hardware.
Patient experience	Adds a queue at the door of an emergency department.	Invisible to patients and visitors.
Published pricing	Rarely. Nearly all quoted per deployment.	Ours is published: $39 to $42 per camera per month.
Best at	Stopping a weapon from entering the building at all.	Seeing what happens on the 95% of the campus with no portal.

Vendor names are listed to describe device categories, not to imply any relationship. Entrance screening pricing is not published by most vendors in that category, so no figures are given here. For the one deployment cost that is on the public record, see our breakdown of Evolv Express pricing from a signed school district RFP.

The Gap Entrance Screening Leaves Open

A screening portal answers one question: is this person carrying a weapon at this moment, at this door? It is very good at that question. It has nothing to say about the surface parking lot at 2 a.m., the garage stairwell, the loading dock, the ambulance bay that the statute explicitly exempts, or the person who was screened clean at 9 a.m. and came back through a staff door.

Hospital security teams already know this, which is why the campus is covered in cameras nobody watches. A 400-bed hospital commonly runs several hundred feeds into a video wall staffed by one or two officers. Human attention degrades on static video within about 20 minutes, which is the whole reason analytics exist. Software watching every feed for a visible firearm, a person in a restricted area after hours, a vehicle loitering by an exit, or a crowd forming in a waiting room is filling the exact gap the portal cannot reach.

The Joint Commission's workplace violence prevention standards, effective for accredited hospitals since January 1, 2022, define workplace violence broadly enough to include verbal aggression, threats, and intimidation, not only physical assault. They require a prevention program with leadership oversight, reporting systems, and data collection and analysis. Between that program, the coming Cal/OSHA amendment, and everything else a health system answers for, most security directors end up needing a way to track each obligation and map it to a specific control rather than keeping it in a binder. Camera analytics do not satisfy those standards either, but the incident timeline and clip evidence they generate is directly useful to the data-collection and post-incident review parts of a program you already have to run.

What our software flags on hospital cameras

Visible firearm held or drawn in view of any camera, indoors or out. Not concealed, and we do not claim otherwise.
After-hours presence in a pharmacy corridor, records room, server room, or plant area.
Loitering and vehicle dwell in ambulance bays, at ED doors, and in garage levels.
Crowd formation in waiting areas, which is often the earliest signal of an escalating situation.
License plates at every entrance and exit, searchable after an incident.
Plain-English search across recorded footage, so a post-incident review takes minutes instead of an afternoon of scrubbing.

Runs on the ONVIF and RTSP cameras already mounted. Nothing to rip out, nothing to re-cable.

How to Evaluate a Hospital Weapons Detection System

Four steps that keep a procurement honest, in the order they actually matter.

01

Separate the two purchases

Write your requirement as two lines: automated screening at the three statutory entrances, and analytics for the rest of the campus. Vendors who sell one will happily bid on both. Splitting the requirement stops that.

02

Price the staffing, not the box

AB 2975 needs designated non-clinical staff present whenever a screened entrance is open. A 24/7 emergency department post runs roughly four to five full-time equivalents once you cover shifts, leave, and turnover. That recurring cost usually exceeds the hardware.

03

Test analytics on your worst camera

Demos run on clean footage. Pick the garage level with the sodium lighting, the ED entrance that backlights everyone at sunset, and the 2 MP camera nobody has replaced since 2015. Detection quality is a function of what the lens resolves.

04

Ask what happens after the alert

Who verifies it, in how many seconds, and what do they do next? A detection with no verified human response and no route into your mass notification or lockdown workflow is a notification nobody acts on.

Hospital Weapons Detection Questions

What are weapons detection systems for hospitals?

They fall into two categories. Automated entrance screening scans a person's body for concealed weapons as they walk through a portal at a hospital door. Camera-based AI runs on existing security cameras and flags a visible firearm anywhere the cameras can see. Entrance screening finds hidden weapons at three doors, camera AI finds drawn weapons across the whole campus, and neither replaces the other.

Does California require hospitals to have weapons detection?

Yes. AB 2975, chaptered September 27, 2024, directs the Cal/OSHA standards board to require a weapon detection screening policy with automated screening at the main public entrance, the emergency department entrance, and a separately accessible labor and delivery entrance. It applies to hospitals licensed under Health and Safety Code section 1250 (a), (b), or (f), with narrow exemptions.

When do California hospitals have to comply with AB 2975?

Not by March 1, 2027, despite what most vendor pages say. That date is the deadline for the Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board to finalize the amended standard. Hospitals comply on a date the board selects, which must be within 90 days of the standard being finalized. The binding date for your facility has not been set.

Can hospitals use handheld metal detector wands for AB 2975?

Not as the sole or primary screening device, for most hospitals. All hospitals may use wands as a secondary device after a primary alarm. Three categories may use handhelds as their primary instrument: small and rural hospitals, facilities providing only extended complex or rehabilitative care, and individual entrances where a walk-through unit would violate Title 24 spacing requirements.

Do hospital employees have to be screened under AB 2975?

No. The law excludes current hospital employees and health care providers who are wearing a hospital identification badge. This exclusion matters operationally, because staff make up the largest share of daily traffic through most hospital entrances, and it substantially reduces the throughput a screening lane has to handle.

How much does a hospital weapons detection system cost?

Entrance screening vendors quote per deployment and rarely publish rates, so any single figure you see online is unreliable. The larger and more predictable cost is staffing: AB 2975 requires designated non-clinical personnel present whenever a screened entrance is open, and a 24/7 post takes roughly four to five full-time equivalents. Camera analytics are cheaper because they add no headcount, ours at $39 to $42 per camera per month.

Can AI cameras detect concealed weapons in a hospital?

No. A firearm inside a bag, waistband, pocket, or under a coat produces no visual signature for a camera to recognize, so no visible-light camera system can detect it. This applies to every vendor in the category, including us, ZeroEyes, Omnilert, Actuate, and Scylla. Detecting a concealed weapon requires physical or electromagnetic screening at a controlled entrance.

Does the Joint Commission require weapons detection in hospitals?

No. The Joint Commission's workplace violence prevention standards, effective January 1, 2022 for accredited hospitals, require a prevention program with leadership oversight, reporting, data collection and analysis, post-incident strategies, and annual staff training. They do not mandate a specific screening technology. AB 2975 is a separate California requirement layered onto that existing standard.

Which hospital entrances need weapons detection under AB 2975?

Three. The main public entrance, defined as the single entrance the hospital designates as the primary access point for patients and visitors, the emergency department entrance, and the labor and delivery entrance if it is separately accessible to the public. Ambulance entrances are not covered by the mandate, which is one of the gaps camera analytics can fill.

Does camera-based weapon detection satisfy AB 2975?

No, and any vendor claiming it does is misreading the statute. AB 2975 describes devices that automatically screen a person's body for instruments capable of inflicting death or serious bodily injury. Camera analytics do not screen bodies, they watch scenes. They are a genuine complement to entrance screening, not a substitute for it, and we will not sell ours as one.

Cover the Campus Your Entrance Screening Cannot See

Surveillant runs visible-weapon, person, vehicle, intrusion, and license plate detection on the ONVIF and RTSP cameras your hospital already owns, at a published $39 to $42 per camera per month, with a free plan for one camera. Point it at your worst garage camera first.

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No credit card required. Nothing here is legal advice; confirm your obligations with counsel and the final Cal/OSHA standard.