Many businesses (including, but certainly not limited to, hospitals) choose wristbands as a form of identification for clients or visitors. While staff will typically wear badges, there are a number of reasons why you might want to differentiate visitors with another form of identification. Foremost, these two different forms of ID make it clear to other staff and visitors the status of anyone they encounter, which is a significant way to increase security.

Secure and Non-Transferable Wristbands

If you are going to use wristbands to control visitor privileges in your building, there are a few things to consider. Most importantly, you want to make sure that the wristband cannot be transferred or re-used. In a hospital, this is particularly dangerous because patients might have access to drugs and medications that could be extremely dangerous to someone for whom they are not prescribed. A patient's diagnosis printed on a non-transferable wristband minimizes the chances of this happening.

Durable and secure wristbands cannot be made out of normal paper. The best options will be made from a synthetic stock (there are strong fibers in the card stock which make it nearly impossible to tear) such as Tyvek®. The wristband will be resistant to water, alcohol, and abrasion. The only way to remove them is to cut them, so no one can give a wristband to someone else after it has been fastened once.

You can get many different colors of wristbands if you want to differentiate visitors for any reason. Sometimes you might want to use wristbands to indicate whose ID has been checked and whether he or she can drink alcohol. You might also want to differentiate between patients and visitors in a hospital. With the wide variety of colors available, you can probably color code almost any system you want.