INTRODUCTION

The International Association for Healthcare Security and Safety – Foundation (IAHSS Foundation) was established to promote the welfare of the public through education, research, and the development of healthcare security and safety body of knowledge. The IAHSS Foundation promotes and develops educational research into the maintenance and improvement of healthcare security and safety management as well as develops and conducts educational programs for the public. For more information, please visit: www.iahssf.org.

The 2020 Healthcare Crime Survey was commissioned under the IAHSS Foundation’s Research and Grants Program. The purpose of the Healthcare Crime Survey is to provide healthcare professionals with an understanding of the frequency and nature of crimes that impact hospitals. Hospital security leaders throughout the United States were invited to participate. Specifically, we asked that the highest-ranking hospital security professional (or their designee) at each hospital to respond to the survey. Those responding would ideally be responsible for overseeing the security records management system. We also asked that if the respondent was responsible for more than one hospital that one survey be completed for each hospital.

As with prior Healthcare Crime Surveys, the 2020 Healthcare Crime Survey collected information on ten (10) different types of crimes deemed relevant to hospitals:

Murder

Rape

Robbery

Aggravated Assault

Assault (Simple)

Disorderly Conduct

Burglary

Theft (Larceny-Theft)

Motor Vehicle Theft

Vandalism

To ensure that all hospitals were answering the questions consistently, regardless of state, the survey included the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Uniform Crime Report definitions. The definitions for each crime are located in Appendix A.

For the 2020 Healthcare Crime Survey, we received 269 usable responses to our core questions. A response was considered usable if the respondent provided data for each of the crime questions and the hospital’s bed count. Bed counts were necessary as the Healthcare Crime Survey has used bed count as a surrogate indicator of hospital size and more specifically to calculate crime rates for each of the ten crimes studied.