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Healthcare Safety, Risk & Compliance Management 2022
Adoption, Capabilities & Performance
Author
Ryan Pretnik
Author
Jennifer Hickenlooper
Healthcare organizations are increasingly interested in taking a broad, enterprise approach to safety, risk, and compliance management. Additionally, multiple vendor mergers and acquisitions in the last few years have many organizations considering their future. This report (KLAS’ first on safety, risk, and compliance management specifically) examines the state of the market, including an early look at the energy around an enterprise strategy. How broadly are organizations adopting their solutions today? What vendors are furthest along on the path toward a unified platform? Which are delivering consistently today, both at a solution level and in terms of support and vendor/client partnership?
RLDatix and Midas Used Most Broadly; RLDatix Clients Unclear on Vendor’s Road Map, Midas Clients Frustrated by Dated Software
RLDatix and symplr Midas (formerly Conduent) have the biggest market shares and are often used by larger acute care organizations for multiple areas of safety, risk, and compliance. RLDatix was formed by the 2018 merger of RL Solutions and Datix; they also acquired the Quantros SRM solution suite in 2019 and Verge Health in 2020. RL6 is the go-forward solution in North America, though the Datix, SRM, and Verge Health solutions are still being maintained with no immediate sunset strategy. Most interviewed clients using any of these platforms say functionality is strong and drives outcomes, such as improved accountability, decision-making, and efficiency. Some RL6 users experience issues with implementations, training, and guidance, hurting their overall satisfaction. Across all products, clients want more communication and guidance about RLDatix’s road map—including future plans for the acquired products and the long-term development strategy for RL6.
symplr’s Midas platform—acquired from Conduent in February 2022—is one of the most long-standing solutions in the safety and risk management market. The system’s broad functionality enables organizations to pull data and reports that they can use to identify improvement opportunities. Customers’ chief complaint is that the product feels dated; while Midas was once seen as one of the best solutions in the market, some respondents say it has grown difficult to use and lacks some functionality (nickel-and-diming for new functionality, reported by almost half of respondents, may be a contributor). Many clients have also experienced issues with customer service ticketing systems and support responsiveness. 25% of respondents would not buy the solution again, though a few express hope that a planned update will improve usability and functionality. It is too soon to tell what the effects of symplr’s acquisition will be. Limited data on symplr Compliance (also obtained through acquisition) shows a mostly positive customer experience, though with a variety of hiccups (e.g., integration with outside products, functionality gaps).
Movement toward Enterprise Approach; Breadth Still Limited
More than half of interviewed organizations say they use or plan to use an enterprise solution for safety, risk, and compliance management. There is still significant room for growth—even organizations that report using an enterprise approach tend to use their vendor for no more than three or four areas out of seven total (see page 6 for details on the market framework). Today, enterprise adoption is too limited to examine customer satisfaction in these settings specifically; as adoption grows, KLAS will continue to share insights on organizations’ experiences, including scaling an enterprise approach in larger organizations. Early data suggests that RLDatix and Midas, now a part of symplr, see the broadest adoption so far, along with Performance Health Partners (notably, most of the latter’s interviewed clients are ambulatory organizations).
Origami Risk, Performance Health Partners (Mostly Ambulatory) Provide Strong Partnership; Customers Highly Likely to Recommend
Origami Risk, Performance Health Partners, and VigiLanz (limited data) stand out for strong partnership with client organizations. All three also receive high ratings for implementation quality. Origami Risk, the 2022 Best in KLAS winner for this market segment, began with a focus on claims but has expanded to a full suite offering. Customers describe strong support and guidance from the vendor aimed at helping organizations achieve outcomes. Origami Risk could improve further by expanding their training and continuing to deliver new technology. Performance Health Partners has been validated mostly in ambulatory settings and less often in large organizations, and many respondents use them in an enterprise manner (including some acute care clients). Interviewed customers say the vendor’s high-touch service and strong reporting and dashboards have driven outcomes. Multiple respondents mentioned that the system could be more intuitive to use and that they could benefit from more training. VigiLanz (limited data) is very new to the safety, risk, and compliance management space and has only a handful of customers so far. Interviewed customers say VigiLanz is great at listening to client needs as they build out capabilities. The solution itself needs continued improvement in areas such as interfacing, ease of reporting, and workflow efficiency.
Riskonnect Offers Robust Product; Implementations & Training Are Weak Spots
Implementation and training are opportunities for improvement for many vendors in this market. Because of the breadth of capabilities in these solutions, strong training is particularly important for client success. Many Riskonnect customers say the technology behind the vendor’s system works well and has helped them improve efficiencies and reporting. However, Riskonnect’s biggest weaknesses are implementation challenges and a lack of training; these weaknesses result in many respondents struggling to figure out how to use the product effectively and get the most out of it, despite its robust functionality.
Outcomes Achieved with Safety, Risk & Compliance Management Solutions
Healthcare Safety, Risk & Compliance Management Framework
In the past, healthcare organizations managed their safety, risk, and compliance needs with a hodgepodge of solutions. But recently they have started looking for a more unified enterprise platform, and vendors are offering a broader set of functionalities. KLAS collaborated with industry experts and vendors to develop a framework outlining the capabilities of an enterprise safety, risk, and compliance management platform. The graphic below provides a comprehensive look at what areas are actually being covered by each vendor in the market. (Definitions for each of the seven main areas are included at the bottom of the page.)
Compliance: Includes privacy and HIPAA compliance—privacy/security (HITECH/HIPAA), accreditation/COP compliance, general regulatory compliance, policy management, privacy and security programs, privacy and security incidents and follow-up, vendor management, denials management, conflict-of-interest surveys, employee communication hotline, web portal for incident management, compliance training and education, recalls/safety alerts for devices (instructions for 10 years), and anonymous reporting.
Employee Health and Safety: Includes event reporting, event investigation/root cause analysis (RCA), corrective and preventive actions, state and federal OSHA reporting and compliance, workers compensation, MMSEA reporting, culture of safety surveys, peer support (care for the caregiver), confidential reporting, and employee experience.
Enterprise Risk Management: Includes risk registers and heat maps, risk assessments, internal audit, emergency preparedness/organizational resiliency, vendor/third-party risk management, vendor risk assessments, contract management, digital/IT risk management, governance, controls, business continuity and risk management (BCM), and mortality review.
Patient and Visitor Safety: Includes event tracking and reporting, event investigation/root cause analysis (RCA), corrective and preventive actions, safety huddles, safety and environment-of-care (EOC) rounding, taxonomy (industry standard, custom, combination), workflow/reviews/automation, data integrations (EMR, ADT/HL7, medication formulary), focus studies/performance improvement, data/analytics (out of the box or custom), patient safety organizations, visitor management, depth of analytics tools, support for enterprise reports (data from multiple sources rolled up in one report), communication/automation/alerts (automated reminders and escalations), and confidential reporting.
Patient Experience and Relations: Includes complaints and grievances, compliments and staff recognition, general feedback, patient satisfaction/service recovery rounding, and CANDOR process for empathetic patient/caregiver communication.
Provider Management and Performance: Includes ongoing quality reviews/OPPE, provider clinical quality, provider risk profile, focused quality reviews/FPPE, peer review (physician and nursing), focused studies/case reviews, provider directory management, integrated payer enrollment, health plan alignment/delegated credentialing, professional review organization (PRO), disruptive and abusive provider incidents, suspension of credentials, changes in delineation of privileges, and physician agreements/contracting.
Risk Management for Claims: Includes liability claims management, litigation management, liability insurance management (policy management and provider insurance—administration of provider insurance, specialty rating, underwriting, certification/LOI generation and management, claim history, integration with provider management, and captive integrations), data integrations, reporting and analytics, claims coding (ICD-9, ICD-10, DRG, etc.), values and exposure tracking, claim audits and assessments, contract management, legal holds, national practitioner data bank (NPDB) reporting, revenue and risk tracing—billing, and audit requisitions and appeals.
About This Report
Each year, KLAS interviews thousands of healthcare professionals about the IT solutions and services their organizations use. For this report, interviews were conducted over the last 12 months using KLAS’ standard quantitative evaluation for healthcare software, which is composed of 16 numeric ratings questions and 4 yes/no questions, all weighted equally. Combined, the ratings for these questions make up the overall performance score, which is measured on a 100-point scale. The questions are organized into six customer experience pillars—culture, loyalty, operations, product, relationship, and value.
To supplement the customer satisfaction data gathered with the standard evaluation, KLAS also created supplemental questions to delve deeper into several areas specific to healthcare safety, risk, and compliance management. These questions asked respondents to identify (1) the specific safety, risk, and compliance areas in which they use their vendor, (2) the outcomes organizations have achieved with their solutions, and (3) whether they plan to adopt an enterprise solution for safety, risk, and compliance management.
Sample Sizes
Unless otherwise noted, sample sizes displayed throughout this report (e.g., n=16) represent the total number of unique customer organizations interviewed for a given vendor or solution. However, it should be noted that to allow for the representation of differing perspectives within any one customer organization, samples may include surveys from different individuals at the same organization. The table below shows the total number of unique organizations interviewed for each vendor or solution as well as the total number of individual respondents.
Some respondents choose not to answer particular questions, meaning the sample size for any given vendor or solution can change from question to question. When the number of unique organization responses for a particular question is less than 15, the score for that question is marked with an asterisk (*) or otherwise designated as “limited data.” If the sample size is less than 6, no score is shown. Note that when a vendor has a low number of reporting sites, the possibility exists for KLAS scores to change significantly as new surveys are collected.
Product Designations Used in This Report
- Mostly Ambulatory [A]: Product for which the majority of respondents are associated with ambulatory care.
- Not Primary [NP]: Product that is not the vendor’s lead product in the market segment but can still be purchased and is still supported. In some cases, the product may not be actively sold in the listed market segment.
Writer
Amanda Wind Smith
Designer
Jess Wallace-Simpson
Project Manager
John Wilson
This material is copyrighted. Any organization gaining unauthorized access to this report will be liable to compensate KLAS for the full retail price. Please see the KLAS DATA USE POLICY for information regarding use of this report. © 2024 KLAS Research, LLC. All Rights Reserved. NOTE: Performance scores may change significantly when including newly interviewed provider organizations, especially when added to a smaller sample size like in emerging markets with a small number of live clients. The findings presented are not meant to be conclusive data for an entire client base.