Survey to identify depth of penetration of critical incident reporting systems in Austrian healthcare facilities

Incident reporting systems or so-called critical incident reporting systems (CIRS) were first recommended for use in health care more than 15 years ago. The uses of these CIRS are highly variable among countries, ranging from being used to report critical incidents, falls, or sentinel events resulting in death. In Austria, CIRS have only been introduced to the health care sector relatively recently. The goal of this work, therefore, was to determine whether and specifically how CIRS are used in Austria. A working group from the Austrian Society for Quality and Safety in Healthcare (ASQS) developed a survey on the topic of CIRS to collect information on penetration of CIRS in general and on how CIRS reports are used to increase patient safety. Three hundred seventy-one health care professionals from 274 health care facilities were contacted via e-mail. Seventy-eight respondents (21.0%) completed the online survey, thereof 66 from hospitals and 12 from other facilities (outpatient clinics, nursing homes). In all, 64.1% of the respondents indicated that CIRS were used in the entire health care facility; 20.6% had not yet introduced CIRS and 15.4% used CIRS only in particular areas. Most often, critical incidents without any harm to patients were reported (76.9%); however, some health care facilities also use their CIRS to report patient falls (16.7%), needle stick injuries (17.9%), technical problems (51.3%), or critical incidents involving health care professionals. CIRS are not yet extensively or homogeneously used in Austria. Inconsistencies exist with respect to which events are reported as well as how they are followed up and reported to health care professionals. Further recommendations for general use are needed to support the dissemination in Austrian health care environments.