Incident reports help caregivers and their managers identify the factors contributing to healthcare incidents. However, collecting incident data is just the first step in the incident management process. To improve safety for patients and staff, the right people must be able to access, sort, organize, and analyze the incident data. To ensure such access, security, and transparency, healthcare organizations are increasingly employing digital incident reporting software. The tools within these SaaS-based systems not only make it easier to register the relevant data, but also facilitate sharing it across the organization.
In addition, your organization can use specific software applications to register data for different types of healthcare incidents. Each reporting application enables you to use workflows that fit the internal process for handling these types of incidents:
Prompt (near) incident reporting is important so that everyone involved is aware of the event’s occurrence and still retains the surrounding details. However, sometimes a report contains limited information. To analyze the incident well, it's helpful to be able to easily check with the patient and family.
The following are recommendations for reporting patient-related incidents:
Read more about our healthcare incident management application.
Incidents, errors, and events occur for various reasons, and poor training, digression from protocols, and miscommunication are just a few of them. Unfortunately, incidents happen not only to patients, but to staff as well. For example, needle sticks, cuts, and splashing incidents are common. Getting proper insights into what went wrong can lead to improved training or credentialing standards.
Recommendations for reporting staff-related incidents:
Read more about our OHS application.
A near-incident, miscommunication, or even just a different point of view can lead to a complaint by a patient or their family. Managing complaints is essential but takes valuable time from already-overloaded employees and exposes hospitals and healthcare organizations to legal or reputational risk. Digital reporting and central collection of complaints will help the organization mitigate those risks.
Recommendations for reporting patient feedback:
Read more about our feedback application.
What we hear from nurses is that incidents involving aggressive patients or families have a lot of impact, causing unrest and negativity in the workplace. Violence not only comes as pushing or hitting a healthcare worker but can also be verbal. Security is often called in, but sometimes it can be just too late.
Recommendations for reporting violent events:
Read more about our aggression incidents application.
Incidents also occur with data. Healthcare data is among the most confidential information—which unfortunately makes it valuable to thieves. Events where patient data is openly accessible in the workplace or when hackers get access to healthcare IT systems can lead to huge legal and reputational risks. The follow-up process for reporting and analyzing information security incidents is different from patient- or staff-related incidents, and compliance regulations around data security are very strict. As a result, we recommend using a separate application for reporting such incidents.
Recommendations for reporting information security incidents:
Read more about our information security incidents application.
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