IAHSSF Crime and Incident Survey – 2015

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INTRODUCTION

The International Healthcare Security and Safety Foundation (IHSSF) is the philanthropic arm of the International Association for Healthcare Security & Safety (IAHSS).  The 2015 IHSSF Crime Survey was commissioned under the Research and Grants Program of the International Healthcare Security and Safety Foundation (IHSSF).  The purpose of the 2015 IHSSF Crime Survey is to provide healthcare professionals with an understanding of crimes that impact hospitals as well as the frequency of these crimes.

Hospital security leaders, primarily consisting of IAHSS members, in both the United States and Canada 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.

The 2015 IHSSF Crime Survey collected information on ten (10) different types of crimes that were deemed relevant to hospitals and included:

Experientially, hospital security professionals know that Emergency Departments often generate the greatest number of assaults and workplace violence incidents in the hospital.  For the 2015 Crime Survey, we attempted to quantify that knowledge.  Specifically, we collected data regarding the number of Aggravated Assaults and Assaults in the Emergency Departments and compared those numbers with the rest of the hospital.  See the section below entitled Aggravated Assault and Assaults in the Emergency Department.

To ensure that all hospitals were answering the questions consistently, regardless of state or province, the survey included the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Uniform Crime Report definition (U.S.) and the Criminal Code Definition (Canada).  The definitions for each crime are located in the Appendices to this report.

For analytical purposes, murder, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault were aggregated as one group called “violent crimes.”

We received 429 responses from both U.S. (n = 395) and Canadian (n = 34) hospitals.  Of those 429 responses, 249 were usable responses.  A response was considered usable if the respondent provided the licensed hospital bed count for the hospital.  Without bed counts, we were unable to calculate a “crime rate.”