Healthcare SafetyZone^®
Flex-Fit Reporting

CASE STUDY: Total Transformation of Incident Reporting for Copper Ridge Surgery Center

CRSC was developed by local physicians, in partnership with Munson Medical Center, to create a state of the art outpatient surgical center. Their 52,270 square foot complex has been providing surgical services in Northern Michigan since 2004, and is in the top 5% of surgery centers in both volume and staff nationwide.

Providing care to over 19,000 patients annually, the facility optimizes use of its eight operating rooms, four procedure rooms and over 44 pre/post-operative beds. Since its inception, CRSC has maintained the highest level of Federal and State certification as well as national accreditation.

TOTAL REPORTING MODULES   11

TOTAL EVENTS SUBMITTED  10,000+

The Climate: Before moving to an electronic reporting system, Copper Ridge Surgery Center (CRSC) used paper forms to track its events. In the old process, a staff member would fill out a form, front and back, and then pass it off to the next person for review, not knowing exactly what would happen once it left his or her hands. From there, the form would change hands maybe 3 - 4 more times, making it difficult for someone to review the information and comment on the different iterations. Forms would occasionally get lost, and for those that didn’t, it was challenging to cull meaningful information from them. Reporting has always been a part of CRSC’s culture, so it’s not surprising that it would proactively pursue a system that would make reporting easier. CRSC ultimately chose Clarity’s patient safety and event management system, the Healthcare SafetyZone®, to improve its reporting process, and in the end, it got everything it needed and more.

More than Data Collection: NMSC started using the Healthcare SafetyZone® for basic event reporting, but that quickly changed when the Quality Department realized how easy it was to create unique forms for different purposes. Data is now coming in from all over the organization on a variety of event types. The ability to set up specific workflows and specific user rules has also enhanced the reporting and follow-up process. Staff don’t have to worry about losing important information, and with all of the data they are collecting, they are able to conduct thorough analyses and generate a wide variety of reports. For example, NMSC’s Quality Assurance Manager draws reports on injuries and exposure, which are later reviewed in quality assurance and safety meetings.

“We even use the SafetyZone® for maintenance and service requests. This way staff can enter requests whenever they want, and the requests get sent to the equipment managers automatically using the system’s workflow criteria.”  - Quality Assurance Manager, CRSC

Staff Engagement: The staff at CRSC have long recognized the importance of reporting, but the transition to an electronic process that is easy to access across the organization has made employees actually enthusiastic about reporting. One of the challenges to creating a culture of safety is that people tend to be fearful of transparent reporting, but there is no sense of that at NMSC. In fact…

“When we started this transition, we said we wanted everything to be reported, and for it to be reported within 24 hours…and I tell you, it happens almost every time!”  - Quality Assurance Manager, CRSC

Efficiency: At CRSC, one of the Quality Assurance Manager’s favorite parts of the Healthcare SafetyZone® is the reporting and analysis feature. As all of Clarity’s clients have found, the ability to create both ad hoc reports and scheduled reports is of extraordinary value, especially when it comes to meeting internal time demands and mandatory agency reporting needs. CRSC has experienced this particular situation first-hand on a number of occasions. For instance, CRSC does not need to report exposures to OSHA, but in the last two years, OSHA has requested this information, and it was easy for staff to quickly gather the necessary data and give it to the HR Manager. In another example, the administrators at CRSC have been using the scheduled reports to meet benchmarking needs for ASCA.