A goal was set by the quality department within patient care services to develop a new process to provide managers and clinical staff with resources to continuously monitor and analyze quantitative and qualitative data in a timely manner.  Monitoring requirements of the National Patient Safety Goals (NPSG), nurse sensitive quality indicators and evidence-based clinical practice guidelines were accomplished through the use of a variety of software and centralized databases.

Several phases took place in order to successfully execute the new processes: 

·        Research current data collection and reporting software;

·        Convert paper reporting system to electronic reporting system;

·        Educate frontline staff on how to report events directly at the point of care and how to use scantrons to collect data not captured by the event reports;

·        Upload data collected by event reports and scantrons into a web-based interactive database which establishes both global and unit-based trends over time;

·        Make changes to the reporting collection/system based on feedback from staff; and,

·        Allow information to be readily available to staff members through the use of a scorecard.

This new technology facilitates real-time reporting of data, enables immediate follow-up from management, creates an opportunity for staff learning experiences and prompts service recovery.  It also enabled this hospital to identify strategies to improve patient outcomes by incorporating pre-existing abundant hospital-wide data.