Adverse Event Reporting Made Easy: 2023 Roundup

• Read time: 4 minutes

Busy schedules, zero follow-up, and the hassle of complex reporting are the top three barriers to reporting on patient safety. The top 5 features you should seek in a good adverse event reporting software include:

• Support and protection for those who make reports
  
• The ability for various personnel to make reports
  
• Quick dissemination to the appropriate people
  
• Easy report viewing and analytics
  
• Trend tracking so you can develop your next steps

From Paging to Fast Tracking

The buzz of his pager went off. It must’ve been the 14th time in the last hour. 

He remembered the curious look of his daughter that morning, the way she scrunched up her face trying to figure out what the little black pager on his belt was, before turning back to her tablet.

The pager buzzed again, exasperating him. With endless alert beeps, this help desk coordinator was a fish drowning in air. How would he ever get through the mountain of patient complaints—and come out of it still on his feet? 

This isn’t a made-up story. The drowning man was Ron Drake, Memorial County Hospital’s Help Desk Coordinator. Like many complaint management help desks, Ron could see no light at the end of a long tunnel of requests and complaints.

If only there were a better way to get through all this patient feedback. It was frustrating enough sorting out urgent demands for feeding tubes versus minor requests for extra pillows.

Ron needed to figure out a better way and fast.

Bust Through Preexisting Silos and Barriers

Busy schedules, zero follow-up, and the hassle of complex reporting are the top three barriers to reporting on patient safety.

Considering rising demands for health care, stagnant wages, and a sluggish supply chain for equipment, Ron’s story is fairly common. Recent strains on health workers and the industry are staggering.

There’s only one easy way to keep heads above water and respond to patient feedback as promptly as possible: taking advantage of software to handle it all.

Easy Adverse Event Reporting: Top 5 Features

The top 5 features you should seek in a good adverse event reporting software include:

• Support and protection for those who make reports
• The ability for various personnel to make reports
• Quick dissemination to the appropriate people
• Easy report viewing and analytics
• Trend tracking so you can develop your next steps

SEE: What Makes Effective Hospital Incident Reporting Software?

How Memorial Optimized Their Backup

“We can resolve and close issues sometimes two to four times faster than we did before,” Ron Drake explains. “With their problems solved more promptly, staff can keep working.” 

A software solution easily solved one of Memorial’s major silos. Busy schedules no longer get in the way of a software solution that efficiently triages their complaint loop.

“Equally important,” Ron continues, “the hospital set a goal to reduce and eliminate overhead pages, creating a more peaceful setting for patients. We are well on our way to meeting our goal. Staff members now know that calling or emailing the help desk brings about an even faster resolution than an overhead page.” 

For Memorial, pagers are a relic of the past. Software solutions eliminated the need for health care workers to be tied to their pagers because, with software, complaints and requests automatically log calls as issues and convert issues directly from email.

SEE: Montgomery County Memorial Hospital Benefits from Help Desk Software 

Partners Who Benefit from Issue Tracking Software

“We are trying to make our hospital very quiet for our patients,” Drake continued. “Having the centralized help desk has eliminated 75 to 80 percent of overhead pages. We’ve seen a very sizable improvement.”

- Ron Drake, Help Desk Coordinator, Montgomery County Memorial Hospital

Other healthcare centers found as much relief as Ron did from using software for their help desk, complaint management, asset management, and more.

• Heywood Hospital uses Issuetrak’s Survey module for its Complaint Management system to ensure patient satisfaction and safety, as well as the security measures of Identity Management.
• Ringgold maximizes the power of Identity Management, Asset Management, and Incoming Email to maintain accountability over their issue correspondence and supplies.
• Samaritan Hospital benefits from IT Help Desk, Identity Management, Asset management, and Incoming Email.

We’d trade an hour of learning any day if it meant lightening our stress loads for the next three decades. 

To first responders and all healthcare professionals, we applaud your dedication. Our mission is to restore your sanity with an efficient solution for managing patient feedback and complaints. 

Let a software solution create change for better health worker conditions and patient care.