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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First, we would like to express our deep gratitude to all healthcare security professionals. They do amazing work under uniquely stressful circumstances, and that has never been more true than during the past two years. Second, we want to thank those who took the time to respond to the crime survey so that their fellow practitioners could benefit from the insights and benchmarking opportunities that this report is able to offer.

Finally, we offer our thanks to Robin Hattersley, editor-in-chief at Emerald Expositions, who provided valuable support by publishing information about participating in the survey on the Campus Safety website and in emails to subscribers.

INTRODUCTION

The International Association for Healthcare Security and Safety (IAHSS) Foundation was established to promote the welfare of the public through education, research and the development of a healthcare security and safety body of knowledge. The IAHSS Foundation promotes and develops research into the improvement of healthcare security and safety and provides scholarships to promote professional development in the sector. For more information, please visit: www.iahssf.org.

The 2021 Healthcare Crime Survey was commissioned under the IAHSS Foundation’s Research and Grants Program. The purpose of the Crime Survey is to provide healthcare security professionals with an understanding of the frequency and nature of crime in hospitals. Hospital security leaders throughout the United States were invited to participate. If the respondent was responsible for more than one hospital, we asked that one survey be completed for each facility.

As with prior Crime Surveys, the 2021 edition collected information on ten types of crimes:

  • Murder
  • Rape
  • Robbery
  • Aggravated Assault
  • Simple Assault
  • Burglary
  • Theft
  • Motor Vehicle Theft
  • Vandalism
  • Disorderly Conduct


To ensure that all hospitals were answering the questions consistently, regardless of location, the survey included the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) Uniform Crime Report definitions. The definitions for each crime can be found in the appendix.

For the 2021 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 Crime Survey has long used this number to gauge hospital size and to calculate crime rates. All of the data reflects incidents that occurred during the 2020 calendar year.