IAHSSF Crime and Incident Survey – 2017

Note:  This is the 2017 Healthcare Crime Survey produced by the International Association for Healthcare Security and Safety – Foundation (IAHSS Foundation) and reflects healthcare crime trends for 2012 – 2016.

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INTRODUCTION

The International Association for Healthcare Security and Safety – Foundation (IAHSS Foundation) was established to foster and promote the welfare of the public through educational and research and 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 2017 Healthcare Crime Survey was commissioned under the IAHSS Foundation’s Research and Grants Program.  The purpose of the 2017 Healthcare Crime Survey is to provide healthcare professionals with an understanding of the frequency and nature of crimes that impact hospitals.  Hospital security leaders 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.  Unfortunately, we did not receive a sufficient number of responses for Canadian hospitals to prepare a Healthcare Crime Survey for Canada this year.

As with prior Healthcare Crime Surveys, the 2017 Healthcare Crime Survey collected information on ten (10) different types of crimes deemed relevant to hospitals:

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 the Appendix to this report.

For the 2017 Healthcare Crime Survey, we received 222 usable responses from U.S. hospitals.  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.