As part of your risk management program, you are required to have an event tracking system. Universal Healthcare Consulting has created an online and automated Occurrence Reporting System on the UHCloud® that allows for the tracking and trending of events. In this series of articles, we will discuss the main events that every outpatient surgery center should track and trend and how to identify a problem.
Occurrences that get tracked are defined as events that occur outside of the normal events planned for the day. Occurrences can range from a patient being transferred to the hospital to a surgical cancellation.
The tracking and trending of occurrences or events are essential to your risk management program. Properly tracking events provides a clear picture of what areas need to be assessed and improved. Once an area of concern is identified the facility can develop a plan of action, assess the plan, and if the issue has not been completely resolved further discussion should be had to implement other ways to resolve the issues. A follow-up assessment should be performed to ensure the issue has been completely resolved.
Here are some examples of occurrences that should be tracked and trended. This is not an all-inclusive list as many events could also be deemed as an occurrence depending on the circumstance.
In the upcoming articles in this series we will discuss who should report the events and how to properly trend the event.
If you have any questions regarding this or any other outpatient topic regarding compliance for your outpatient surgical facility contact us at: info@universalhc.com.
