A hospital bed has a bed frame and communication circuitry operable to transmit bed status data to a network of a healthcare facility and to receive messages from the network. The messages include information indicating whether bed status conditions are being monitored by a remote computer of the network for generation of alert messages to at least one caregiver in response to alert conditions being indicated by the bed status data. The bed has at least one user input that is used locally at the bed to enable and suspend monitoring of the bed status conditions by the remote computer.