Integrating incident data from five reporting systems to assess patient safety: making sense of the elephant.

BACKGROUND: A study was conducted to examine and compare information gleaned from five different reporting systems within one institution: incident reporting, patient complaints, risk management, medical malpractice claims, and executive walk rounds. These data sources vary in the timing of the reporting (retrospective or prospective), severity of the events, and profession of the reporters. METHODS: A common methodology was developed for classifying incidents. Data specific to each incident were abstracted from each system and then categorized using the same framework into one of 23 categories. RESULTS: Overall, there was little overlap, although each reporting system identified important safety issues. Communication problems were common among patient complaints and malpractice claims; malpractice claims' leading category was clinical judgement. Walk rounds identified issues with equipment and supplies. Adverse event reporting systems highlighted identification issues, especially mislabelled specimens. The frequency of contributions of reports by provider group varied substantially by system. Physicians accounted for 50% of risk management reports, but in adverse event reporting, where nurses were the main reporters, physicians accounted for only 2.5% of reports. Complaints and malpractice claims come primarily from patients. CONCLUSIONS: The five reporting systems each identified different yet complementary patient safety issues. To obtain a comprehensive picture of their patient safety problems and to develop priorities for improving safety, hospitals should use a broad portfolio of approaches and then synthesize the messages from all individual approaches into a collated and cohesive whole.

Evaluation of the contributions of an electronic web-based reporting system: enabling action.

BACKGROUND: Incident reporting represents a key tool in safety improvement. Electronic voluntary reporting systems have been perceived as advantageous compared to paper approaches and are increasingly being implemented. OBJECTIVES: To evaluate the rate, content, ease of use, reporters' profile, and the follow-up and actions resulting from reports submitted to a Web-based electronic reporting system. METHODS: Analysis of the submitted reports to a commercial Web-based reporting system at a tertiary care academic hospital for 31 months between May 2004 and November 2006. RESULTS: During the study period, 14,179 reports were submitted. The leading incident categories were labs (30%), followed by medication issues (17%), falls (11%), and blood bank (10%). Of the reported incidents, 24% were near misses, 61% were adverse events that caused no harm, 14% caused temporary harm, 0.4% caused permanent harm, and 0.1% caused death. Of the eligible staff, 29% submitted a report during the study period. Physicians submitted only 2.9% of the reports; most reports were submitted by nurses, pharmacists, and technicians. Physicians tended to report on more severe cases and focused on different topics than other professionals. Overall, 84% of the reports came from the inpatient setting. On average, it took 14 minutes to submit a report. In following up on reports, first manager review was completed within a median of 22 hours, and a mean of 4 people reviewed each report. A large array of actions followed the reports. CONCLUSIONS: This application effectively captured incidents, actions, and follow-up. Ease of data manipulation facilitated descriptive statistical analysis, and the ability to use branching algorithms may have helped in decision making about actions and follow-up.