Description
Background: Incident management systems (IMSs) are used in hospitals to collect incident data when patients are harmed. These data are used to investigate what happened and why and to develop interventions to reduce further harm to patients. The rate of adverse events resulting in serious harm to patients has not changed in the last two decades.Research question: What is the cost of the IMS process for serious and low harm incidents in the Australian acute care sector?
Methodology: We conducted focus groups with 21 health service staff from seven hospitals across the ACT, Victoria, New South Wales, and Queensland. We created activity-based costing maps to represent the different activities, personnel, and time involved within the IMS process. We used 2024-2025 pay rates and on-costs for each state in our activity-based costing analysis. We included steps in the pathway that were common to all incidents but excluded the remediation steps as they were incident specific.
Findings: Preliminary results show the IMS process in ACT for a serious harm incident was estimated to cost $18,188.97, while the cost in Victoria totalled $29,134.38 per-incident, and $7,137,923.10 statewide per-year. Approximately 170,000 low harm incidents were reported in NSW in 2024, with an estimated cost of $147.51 per-incident, $505,579.08 per-week, and $26,288,348.21 per-year.
Policy implications: The IMS process consumes significant resources given the involvement of clinical governance staff, senior clinicians, and hospital management. Our findings will provide policymakers with information to determine the costs and benefits of this process.
| Period | 11 Aug 2025 |
|---|---|
| Event title | Emerging Health Policy & Economics Research Conference |
| Event type | Conference |
| Location | Sydney, Australia, New South WalesShow on map |