Improving the response to adverse events – research and innovations from Australia

Internationally in health care, there is clear evidence that healthcare incident management systems and associated patient safety investigations are not as effective as expected in systematically reducing the frequency of incidents causing harm to patients (also known as adverse events).

The Australian Institute of Health Innovation at Macquarie University is undertaking research as part of a National Health and Medical Research (NHMRC) Grant Partnership Grant and with four public health systems in Australia to improve the health systems response when patients are harmed.  The research has three aims:

1: Evaluate traditional and emerging methods to improve response to, and learning from, serious incidents – creating best practice and decision support.

2: Develop and test methods, including integrating artificial intelligence tools, to improve analyses of, and learning from, all incidents.

3: Undertake a cost analysis of the incident management system process – for the first time, an economic appraisal of Australian data to quantify the costs of incident management systems and associated patient safety Reviews. 

This session will summarise the research and findings to date, as well as innovations that are occurring in Australia in relation to and health services’ response to adverse events, including patient safety investigations. These include having consumer representatives on patient safety investigation teams and Dedicated Family Support for patients impacted by adverse events.

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