Security improvements that the Maryland prison agency recently implemented at a Hagerstown hospital after a state correctional officer was fatally shot there should be put in place statewide, a union leader said Monday as correctional officers prepared to rally in Annapolis.

Two officers, not just one, should be required to stand guard over medium- and maximum-security inmates who have been admitted to hospitals, said Ronald Bailey, president of American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 92. The state Division of Correction recently made such a change at Washington County Hospital after Officer Jeffery A. Wroten was slain, allegedly by the hospitalized inmate he was guarding. But a 30-year-old rule requiring just one officer on guard remained in place elsewhere.

Bailey, whose union is the collective bargaining agent for the state's 7,000 correctional officers, said increased staffing could prevent another hospital shooting and help resolve a "crisis situation" in the prisons.

"We don't want to say, 'I told you so,' but these are the kinds of things we have been fearful of for quite some time," Bailey said. "There are real problems with transporting inmates to all hospitals and not having sufficient security at those hospitals."

He said such officers also should carry two-way radios or cellular telephones so they can contact their institutions immediately instead of using landline phones.

Corrections Commissioner Frank C. Sizer Jr. said Thursday that inmate hospitalization policies would be reviewed "after we get all the facts" about Wroten's shooting. The case is still being investigated, Maryland State Police Sgt. Thornnie Rouse said Monday.

The alleged shooter, Brandon Morris, 20, hasn't been charged. He was moved from the medium-security Roxbury Correctional Institution near Hagerstown to the maximum-security Maryland Correctional Adjustment Center, also called Supermax, in Baltimore, after his arrest. Police haven't said how Morris was able to seize Wroten's gun and shoot him in the face despite a rule requiring that inmates be shackled to their hospital beds.