Reporting of workplace accidents at largest Belgian hospital

More than ten years ago, UZ Leuven partnered with symplr Patient Safety (TPSC) and its Belgian partner, adheco, to establish a patient incident management system. Even after moving to the TPSC solution, the largest Belgian Academic Hospital used multiple applications plus a homegrown system to manage employee first-aid events and workplace accidents. This approach essentially split patient incident data and workplace event data.

Changes in welfare legislation regarding first-aid and work accidents, however, caused the hospital to rethink its approach. In response, adheco answered the call to help UZ Leuven centrally manage all incident reporting. The solution was the TPSC Cloud^TM platform, live since January 2019.

Today, using the TPSC Cloud^TM, any of UZ Leuven’s 9,000 employees can easily report an event. As a result, approximately 300 first aid incidents and 600 workplace accidents are reported annually, contributing to safety improvements.

TPSC Cloud^TM enables customization for reporting

TPSC Cloud^TM platform was ideal for UZ Leuven because it enabled the hospital to customize its employee incident reporting system, dubbed “MIMS.” The application is structured as follows:

• The employee reports an incident via an online form that is available on the organization’s intranet.
• The reporter receives an e-mail confirmation.
• First aid notifications are followed up daily in the application.
• In the event of an accident at work, an email is sent to the Personnel Department, which can contact the insurer as soon as possible.

TPSC Cloud^TM enabled UZ Leuven to customize its form to contain the sections needed by various participants in the process. For example, the incident report file contains a summary of the incident used by the UZ Leuven Prevention & Environment Service. This allows the service to quickly view the status and most important details of a report at a glance. New information, such as the following, can be added to the file after the report is created, to accommodate the needs of any relevant party:

• Additional contact details of the reporter.
• Details of the incident, such as the accident victim’s location, the time, and the activity being undertaken when the accident occurred.
• Consequences for the working hours' protocol and any compensation offered to the accident victim.
• Details for the insurer, such as the consequences of the accident and file numbers. Other customization includes an auto-generated declaration form plus a cover letter for the insurance company, each time an accident is reported.

TPSC Cloud^TM facilitates incident follow-up

After an incident has been reported at UZ Leuven, an automatic workflow triggers the appropriate follow-up process based on the reporter’s responses to a few questions. An important filter helps to distinguish first-aid incidents from work-related accidents:

• The Prevention & Environment Service follows up on all first-aid incidents, completing them within the department.
• A workplace accident is monitored by the Prevention & Environment Service as well as by the Personnel Department. The HR department is responsible for finalizing and submitting the file to the insurer.

In cases where misinformation or interpretation differences lead to the wrong follow-up procedure, the Prevention & Environment Service can change the incident type.

The results of Prevention & Environment Service’s follow-up: discussion and possible implementation of improvement actions (e.g., the purchase of eye showers and the placing of warning cones).

Benefits of making reporting easy for employees

UZ Leuven encourages employees to report as many incidents as possible, and the organization has come closer to its goal by using the TPSC Cloud^TM. Thorough reporting keeps patients, providers, and employees safer, of course. But it also minimizes financial costs and other negative consequences in the long term. For example, insurance claims are expedited when the insurer is provided with thorough details as soon as possible after the event.

The main advantage that UZ Leuven experiences by using the TPSC Cloud^TM is the integration of multiple applications within one environment, making auditing easier. Other benefits include:

• A “familiar” platform that administrators and users find easy to use and customize.
• Easier transfer of new reporting applications to multiple projects within the same system.
• A faster reporting process and fewer errors in following up.
• Data (reports, dashboards) can be quickly made available to employees and consultative bodies.
• User rights can be set up very specifically, ensuring that the user sees only the functionality that applies to him/her, and privacy is guaranteed.

One employee lauded TPSC’s convenience and ability to handle reports filed from any device:

“After my accident, I immediately consulted the Occupational Healthcare Department. Before the start of my consultation, I registered my work accident via the tablet, so that this was immediately reported to my employer.”  (employee, UZ Leuven)

Less administration makes room for priorities

After the launch of the MIMS application, UZ Leuven started multiple new improvement projects within the TPSC Cloud^TM platform:

1. The hospital will focus more on preventing patient falls using a decentralized approach. Services will gain additional insight into the fall incidents in their department, such as where, when, and how a fall incident occurred, after which concrete actions can be taken.
2. The hospital is developing methods to increase services’ involvement in the incidents in their department, as well as to offer aid from working groups (e.g., Aggression Work Group) for an optimized handling process.
3. The UZ Leuven Fertility Center will use the TPSC Cloud^TM to aid in reporting for all biobanks within the organization. Adding the center to the reporting platform aids in auditing, gaining insight into report types, and facilitating improvement plans that apply to multiple biobanks.

Learn more about TPSC Cloud^TM

Learn more about the possibilities of using TPSC Cloud^TM to make a positive difference in your organization. We would love to hear from you. Please complete the contact form on our website.