CoxHealth names new System Director of Public Safety & Security

CoxHealth recently named Alan Butler as System Director of Public Safety & Security, overseeing all public safety efforts at CoxHealth’s six hospitals and more than 80 clinics.

Butler brings more than 30 years of experience in health care security. He comes to CoxHealth eager to return to his roots: working on the front lines.

“After consulting from outside hospitals for 12 years, I wanted to get back inside health care and improve things on the ground,” he says. “I am a people person and I wanted to get back into the hospital, where I can be with people and do what I do best.”

For the past 12 years, Butler worked in the security division of HSS, a Denver-based company specializing in security services for health care. Most recently, he served as HSS’s Vice President of Healthcare Security.

In his role at HSS, he worked with more than 200 hospitals across the United States, ranging from rural facilities to urban medical centers.

Butler has served as a consultant on preventing violence in health care and has worked with organizations to help them build proactive violence mitigation strategies.

“CoxHealth is an organization that has made public safety a priority,” he says. “Public safety and security is an extension of the mission of health care and I want to help CoxHealth fulfill the commitment to create a safe care and work environment.

“In public safety, we help employers become -- and stay -- employers of choice. Staff want to know they can come here, do their jobs, and stay safe.”

Butler began his career as an officer with the Dallas police Department, where he worked for eight years before transitioning to health care security.

In his three-decade career in health care security, he has worked as the director of security for the University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics in Madison, HCA/Medical City Dallas Hospital and Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas.

Butler also spent five years leading a patient satisfaction initiative for a 700-bed hospital in Dallas.

He holds a master’s degree in Criminal Justice Management from Sam Houston University, and a bachelor’s in Professional Studies in Criminal Justice from State University of New York at Utica/Rome.

He is a Certified Healthcare Protection Administrator (CHPA) and served as the 2019 President of the International Association of Healthcare Security & Safety (IAHSS) Board of Directors.