Leading Hospital Reduces Worker Injuries, Eases Reporting

Even before nationwide healthcare reform took center stage, an award-winning level II regional trauma center had plenty of reasons to manage efficiently and maintain quality of care.

The 800-bed, not-for-profit hospital must file annual financial reports showing how it is keeping costs and quality of care in line despite a lack of competition. A merger with another hospital made it the busiest surgical center in the state. With nationally ranked heart, stroke and neurology programs, the hospital is also the largest employer in its home city. So it faces major challenges in managing work-related injuries.

Completely self-insured, the hospital has relied on CSC’s RISKMASTER software for years to process workers’ compensation claims for its 6,000 employees and to process workers’ compensation claims for a string of affiliated healthcare facilities.

"The first thing I do in the morning is open RISKMASTER and check to see what came in overnight, and I check it again several times throughout the day to monitor what is going on in the hospital,” said the hospital’s risk data analyst. “We follow every event from start to finish in RISKMASTER. We investigate each report and if an incident warrants a claim, we set the claim information up in the system and put our attorneys on notice. If no medical care is needed, we keep the data for trending purposes.”

Measuring Effectiveness of Safety Programs

Increasingly, the hospital is using its RISKMASTER trend data to identify, track and analyze problems. For instance, the system was recently used to determine how to best reverse a notable increase in back injuries sustained by nurses and other employees while moving heavy or awkwardly positioned patients.

"Over a 3-year period, we purchased some new lifting aids and trained employees on how to protect their backs, and RISKMASTER tracked the results,” the risk data analyst said. “After three years, it allowed us to quantify that we had decreased back injuries by 66 percent. So that was very impressive.”

The hospital is also using RISKMASTER to identify any significant patterns surrounding patient falls.

“We’re trying to get to no injuries,” the analyst said. “And that’s a large goal, a high goal to set for a hospital, because patients don’t always cooperate.”

The hospital is even using RISKMASTER data to study patterns surrounding last-minute surgery cancellations so that it can pinpoint any core causes tied to work routines, processes or specific healthcare providers.

Streamlined Incident Reporting Process

The hospital is well known for its state-of-the-art life-saving medical technology, and it has been recognized nationally for its use of data and performance measures to improve quality and patient care.

RISKMASTER has supported the hospital’s claims and risk management program through nearly every wave of technology, beginning with the DOS-based version, then the Windows-based version and most recently the Web-based version, RISKMASTER X.

CSC also worked closely with hospital risk management staff to help the organization upgrade from a paper-based claims reporting form to a custom-designed Web-based form that actually cut weeks off the amount of time it takes for claims to reach risk managers.

“Before we went to the Web version, an employee would fill out the paper form, it would go to a supervisor, and then a department director, maybe a vice president, and maybe it would come to us then, or sometimes it would get waylaid on someone’s desk,” the risk data analyst said. “Once, someone submitted a year’s worth of reports.”

“Now the reports can reach risk managers in a matter of 5 or 10 minutes,” she said. “That’s just a major savings.”

Improved Management Information

CSC worked with the hospital’s risk managers to customize the online reporting form. Instead of restricting who could file the reports as before, the Web form gave all hospital employees the ability to file — and vent — right after an incident occurs. The reports, which often contain descriptions that can prove important to claims managers, are immediately transmitted to the risk data analyst and the appropriate supervisor.

Speeding up the process makes it easier to mitigate damages by letting people know they’ve been heard and that the hospital is taking the report seriously.

Coaxing department managers to transition from paper to a Web-based claims process took some time because it required people to step outside of their comfort zone.

“But now, they love getting the statistics and trend reports we provide at our monthly meetings,” the risk data analyst said.” I think that our managers are just really seeing the possibilities, how they can use the RISKMASTER program to track issues that they think might be a trend but aren’t sure, and use it to actually validate things that are occurring so that they can say, ‘look, we need to take care of this.’”

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