Safety is always a concern in hospital environments. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic and civil unrest over the past year, risks to hospital and health system staff, patients and assets have only increased.
During a virtual featured session sponsored by Everbridge as part of Becker's Hospital Review 11th Annual Meeting in May, two Everbridge executives — Imad Mouline, chief technology officer, and Eric Chetwynd, general manager of healthcare solutions — discussed the increased safety risks faced by health systems and how critical event management systems can provide hospitals with the visibility necessary to mitigate those risks.
Four insights from the session:
1. Over the last year hospitals saw an escalation in safety concerns. Workplace violence, active shooter events, active assailant events, IT outages and supply chain problems have all affected the safety of hospital staff and patients, even before the pandemic.
"Pre-COVID, we saw these things on a regular basis," Mr. Chetwynd said. "As we go through COVID, we see an escalation of these types of events."
2. Risks need to be assessed and managed beyond the hospital walls. Hospital risk and safety management traditionally look at what happens on the hospital campus. However, what happens beyond the hospital also affects its operations. That can include the need to urgently serve more patients due to a natural disaster or an increased likelihood of on-site violence associated with civil unrest. "One of the common themes we're hearing is we need to think more globally, more broadly, and reach out from our four walls to understand and mitigate those risks," Mr. Chetwynd said.
3. A critical event management system improves visibility and collaboration. Hospitals using a CEM system can look at what's happening around them and then work collaboratively with local authorities to ensure that all key stakeholders are adequately prepared as events occur. The real-time visibility offered by CEM systems allows stakeholders not only to activate protocols to better protect staff, patients and assets, but to prepare for patients who may be coming in because of an event. Hospitals can also modify actions based on the real-time information they are getting from the CEM system because, as Mr. Mouline said, "Not everything occurs according to plan."
4. Hospitals need to improve how they use risk information. Post-COVID-19, hospitals will need to be prepared to face and mitigate both physical risks, like workplace violence, and virtual risks, like IT outages. Leveraging risk intelligence via CEM, whether from within the hospital itself or from the city or beyond, empowers hospitals with the information needed to create a safer hospital environment for all.
To learn more about this session, click here.