Hospitals are expected to demonstrate that infant abduction and mismatch risks are identified, controlled, and continuously monitored. In 2025, The Joint Commission’s position is clear, and it points that policies alone are not sufficient. Surveyors expect that maternity, postpartum, and NICU units implement reliable controls for newborn identification and infant abduction prevention measures, and demonstrate that these controls work with retrievable evidence.
Two touchpoints frame this expectation: The National Patient Safety Goals (effective January 2025) requirement to use distinct methods of identification for newborns, and the Environment of Care requirement to establish and implement procedures for handling infant/pediatric abduction.
One Preventable Mistake in Healthcare is One Too Many
The NCMEC have documented 345 confirmed infant abductions since 1964, of which 140 were taken from healthcare facilities. Though rare, infant abduction cases come with irreversible damage, and a single incident can trigger immediate civil liability and long-term damage to public trust that far exceeds the direct response costs.
Far more frequent, mother-baby mismatch and infant misidentification events occur regularly nationwide. These mistakes lead to procedure errors with clinical, legal, and reporting implications. The frequency, documentation requirements, and downstream harm of mismatches all make it a persistent compliance and safety exposure.
Compliance in Practice with Real-Time Location Systems
Compliance is operational. On the unit, it means staff can reliably confirm mother-infant identity, and technology prevents unauthorized newborn movement at exits and elevators, and the organization can produce a time-stamped record of any alert and response. The Joint Commission’s distinct newborn identification requirement calls for a reliable process more than standardized naming and banding practices, but more modern and dependable methods.
Litum Infant Security RTLS
Infant Security Real-Time Location Systems (RTLS) give hospitals continuous visibility and control over newborn movement, pairing each baby to the right mother and authorized caregivers while monitoring exits and elevators in real time. With RTLS; maternity, postpartum, and NICU teams can get clear and repeatable safeguard results that strengthen Joint Commission readiness and patient trust.
How the System Works on the Unit: Infant Security RTLS
An infant wears a small, tamper-proof Little®Tag, while the mother receives a Compact Tag and assigned staff use their standard badges. A primary pairing is enforced between the mother and infant, and routine movement is allowed with the assigned nurse’s badge. When clinical needs require it, the unit can grant time-limited and geozone-sensitive pairing to a nurse that auto-expires.
Prevention You Can See - and Prove
The system uses precise UWB/BLE location to know who an infant is and where they are at all times. If a tagged infant approaches a protected boundary without valid pairing, the system raises an on-unit alarm and sends real time location to security and authorized nurses. Every event is time-stamped, creating a retrievable incident trail for safety surveys.
Built to Integrate and Scale
Infant safety RTLS ties into enterprise security and access controls so one event drives a coordinated response. Through integrations with access control platforms (e.g., LenelS2 OnGuard), the system can hold/lock doors, apply elevator roles, and launch call lists. The same RTLS backbone can later extend to Staff Duress, Patient Flow, Wander Management, and Medical Asset Tracking– no separate infrastructure.
Litum has delivered real time location-based solutions in healthcare for nearly a decade, backed by two decades of RTLS innovation since 2004. The main objective in healthcare is to improve the quality of care and to foster a safe environment. Litum not only understands this but strives to address long standing operational gaps to tailor consistent and robust solutions for healthcare organizations.
Choosing Litum means getting a healthcare RTLS platform that’s accurate, reliable, and integration ready. Built from global experience, deployments in 50+ countries, and field tested practices, Litum RTLS solutions work to directly address the most critical challenges in healthcare.
