Predicting & Preventing Workplace Violence in Healthcare Through Better Care Coordination

On January 14, Benjamin Zaniello, MD, MPH and Melissa Morales, LCSW presented a webinar on how care teams can take advantage of collaboration technology to curb incidences of workplace violence in hospitals and other care settings.

Zaniello discussed how so much of medical care is based on medical uncertainty, rather than medical necessity. He mentioned that effective solutions need three important aspects: focus, engagement, and collaboration.

Collective’s platform looks at all data on 100 percent of patients that walk through a partner’s doors. To eliminate alert fatigue, only relevant data is then presented to the right stakeholder directly into their workflow. In the example of a safety or security event, clinicians can see important information before seeing a patient. Care teams can then work together to keep both patients and staff safe.

Morales highlighted how relevant, real-time data can be used as a foundation for a proactive, rather than reactive approach towards workplace violence. She said that the knowledge of risk means nothing if workflows aren’t implemented to take action.

Morales then shared a few best practices when it comes to preventing workplace violence.

• Defining what constitutes a security and safety event for your organization
• Training staff on identifying and documenting events
• Establishing processes to ensure staff remain safe

Zaniello and Morales shared two specific case studies how different hospitals have been able to overcome the belief that workplace violence is just another part of the job and take a proactive approach to preventing it.

First, CHI St. Anthony, a critical access hospital in rural Oregon. CHI St. Anthony was facing high utilization rates and high levels of substance use—which sometimes led to incidents of workplace violence—when they decided to implement real-time analytics and alerts. Encouraging staff to document incidents led to a 20 increase in logged security events, which resulted in CHI St. Anthony being able to get security and send staff to training classes.

The next success story was about Sutter Roseville Medical Center, part of a not-for-profit health system in northern California. At Sutter Roseville, 30 percent or less of workplace violence incidents were being reported. Staff were encouraged to take an “if you see something, say something” approach and log violent incidents. Security developed a playbook for addressing patients with violent histories. Staff are now empowered to report because they know they’ll be heard and that something will be done.

Listen to a recording of the webinar here.