Value of Incident Reporting to Address Real-time Safety Opportunities During the COVID-19 Pandemic

A strong safety culture encourages staff to identify and report safety events and near misses through an incident reporting system. The objectives were to: (1) assess the effectiveness of real-time reporting of safety events for timely identification of trends and improvement opportunities in a rapidly changing environment and (2) determine temporal changes in safety event categories throughout the 4 COVID-19 pandemic waves in Southern California.

This retrospective study involved all safety incidents reported in patients over age 18 related to the care of COVID-19 through the hospital's incident reporting system, CS-Safe from March 17, 2020 to February 25, 2022.

There were 5843 suspected and confirmed COVID-19 cases across the 4 waves. The reported events primarily were associated with patients between the ages of 65 and 84 years, with the majority (62.7%) male, white (65.4%), and non-Hispanic (73.5%). Most events reported were related to clinical care issues (41.6%). A difference in the rates of safety incidents was observed across the waves. The highest rate of medication management-related safety incidents was in wave 2 (0.25 incidents/1000 d) and the highest rate of incidents occurred in critical care in wave 3 (1.20 incidents/1000 d).

The alignment of COVID-19-related safety incidents across the 4 waves with the occurrences during this time demonstrates the value of real-time reporting in identifying trends and opportunities for improvement in a rapidly changing environment. Hence, real-time assessment of events can be valuable in concurrently addressing demands during unprecedented situations.