As we travel around the country visiting communities and partnering with them for improved outcomes, we often identify areas of risk associated with incident trends and tracking. In a perfect world there would be no falls, elopements, burns, or lacerations—but the world we live in isn't perfect! Unfortunately, neither are many of the systems your QAPI committee depends on to keep on track and reduce incidents with injuries.
When was the last time you looked at your raw data on falls? Were you surprised at the number of falls, the number of residents with repeat falls, or an obvious pattern of falls? Did you dig deeper into the data to see if there are any commonalities, trends or patterns? Does your QAPI committee depend on these reports that are manually input?
3 Areas of Hidden Risk in Your Communities
Manual data entry
Manual data entry is time consuming and has a high risk for errors. Recently when we visited a community, the data on the incident report log didn't match the actual incident reports. There were transcription and data entry errors in several areas of the log. The spreadsheet was intended to help analyze the data, but the data input wasn't accurate. As a result, the QAPI committee had a false sense of security because they had been relying on the log for their information.
Documentation
Another area of risk is documentation. The incident report is a legal document, and once pen is put to paper, “it is what it is.” Although we continue to educate staff on the importance of objective, factual documentation, subjective language is often used in incident reports—phrases like “resident fell” or “appears that resident slipped from chair” when the incident wasn't witnessed.
Wouldn’t it be great if someone other than you reviewed these statements and provided feedback when a sentinel event occurred? What a great educational opportunity for you and your team! With QA Reader, risk managers automatically review your incident reports and provide expert advice.
Preventive interventions
Staff often document rote interventions that aren't resident-specific, or they fail to document any at all! Remember, the goal of identifying preventive interventions on the incident report is to assist staff in preventing repeat incidents in real time. So when preventive interventions are written as: "Resident tripped and fell in the dining room – intervention – low bed" or: "Resident fell while self-ambulating to the bathroom – reminded to use call light; second fall – reminded to use call light" the interventions are obviously not going to be effective.
Risk management is a great resource for reviewing these interventions and providing feedback to improve outcomes. QA Reader can do that!
So, when you consider why you should invest time and money in a program like QA Reader, ask yourself this question: Are you sure you know what your data shows? If you have any doubt, you owe it to yourself, your staff—and, more importantly, your residents—to request a customized QA Reader demo.
The demo is free, the peace of mind is priceless!
Next Steps
- Learn more about improving your risk management—subscribe to our blog
- Download a free overview of QA Reader
- See QA Reader in action—request a live demo
