Twenty-nine percent reported reducing medication errors as their organization's top safety improvement initiative for 2020.
This was followed by reducing HAIs and HACs (26%), reducing falls, (18%), Ensuring the reporting of safety events in a timely manner (16%), reducing antibiotic overuse/nonoptimal use (7%), and reducing opioid over-prescribing/misuse/abuse (4%).


Hospitals are aware of the benefits of safety-enhancing technology, but 29% don't use it
Ninety-five percent say clinical surveillance solutions improve patient safety, but less than one-third (29%) use them.
Those that reported their hospitals' use of real-time alerts, like those provided by clinical surveillance solutions, were more likely to:
Be very or extremely confident their organization could respond to a viral or disease outbreak immediately (86% vs. 75%)
Report that sepsis mortality rates had fallen at their hospital in the last year (50% vs. 37%)
Report that their process for identifying patients at risk for sepsis was very or extremely effective (61% vs. 48%)
Report that medication error rates had fallen at their hospital in the past year (51% vs. 25%)
Report that opioid prescribing rates had fallen at their hospital in the past year (83% vs. 72%)


One in five hospitals may not be able to respond to a viral outbreak quickly

Twenty-one percent said they are only slightly confident or not at all confident that they could immediately respond to a viral outbreak, such as measles, as soon as a patient presents with symptoms. More than half (52%) said they are very confident and 27% reported extreme confidence.
Only 36% of respondents are receiving real-time alerts related to viral and disease outbreaks.


"As the U.S. fights the COVID-19 pandemic, hospitals face new and unprecedented challenges to keep patients safe," said VigiLanz Chairman and CEO David Goldsteen, MD. "We are already seeing increasing adoption of technology solutions to help manage medication scarcity and use, infection control challenges, and much more, specifically pertaining to COVID-19. Hospitals are recognizing that use of technology and real-time intelligence directly correlate with patient safety and outcomes. While technology is not the only lever hospitals should be using to improve safety, it is an essential and foundational element of success."


Methodology

VigiLanz commissioned Sage Growth Partners, a healthcare consultancy, to conduct the independent survey of 100 hospital and health system leaders in February 2020. Respondent titles included chief executive officer (16%), chief medical officer (5%), chief nursing officer (11%), quality executive (8%), pharmacy executive (34%), infection prevention executive (23%), and other (3%).

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