CIRS in Long-Term Care: Why Associations and Care Centers Should Now Create the Foundation for Just Culture, Patient Safety and Effective Quality Contracts

An AI tool was used to translate this article from German.

Long-term care in Switzerland is facing a decisive phase of development. With the upcoming quality contracts (in the context of Art. 58a KVG and Art. 58g and 58d KVV), the requirements for structured quality development, risk management and transparent safety culture are increasing massively.

It is no longer enough to just react to incidents. What is needed are structures with which nursing and retirement centers as well as associations can learn systematically, identify risks at an early stage and implement sustainable improvements.

This is exactly where a modern CIRS in long-term care comes in. As a professional reporting and learning system, it helps to make critical events, near misses and systemic weaknesses visible, to analyze them and to derive concrete improvements from them. A basic overview of CIRS and the new-win solutions can be found here: CIRS by new-win.

What is a CIRS in long-term care?

A Critical Incident Reporting System (CIRS) is a reporting and learning system for safety-related events. Employees can use it to report critical situations, near misses and risks in a low-threshold and anonymous manner so that organizations can learn from them and develop targeted measures to improve patient and resident safety.

Especially in long-term care, a CIRS is much more than a digital form. Used correctly, it becomes a central instrument of quality development, risk management and the lived safety culture. It also combines everyday practice with regulatory requirements. Read also the blog post: CIRS in long-term care: An indispensable system for more safety, quality and legal compliance

Why CIRS is becoming increasingly important in long-term care

In retirement and care centres, in specialised forms of housing and in other long-term care facilities, teams work with a high level of responsibility every day. Where people are cared for, accompanied, treated, mobilized and cared for in an interdisciplinary manner, critical situations, near misses or systematic and organizational weaknesses inevitably arise.

The decisive factor is therefore not whether risks and mistakes occur, but how professionally an organization deals with them. An effective CIRS in long-term care creates transparency, enables learning instead of blame and strengthens the safety culture at all levels. This is exactly what we see as a central lever for the future of long-term care.

Typical applications of a CIRS in long-term care

A digital CIRS can help in retirement and care centers to systematically work on the following topics, among others:

• Medication errors and near misses
• Fall events and prevention potentials
• Communication problems in the team or at interfaces
• Safety-relevant observations in everyday care
• Organizational weaknesses in processes and responsibilities
• Risks that are repeated but have not yet been evaluated in a structured way

Quality contracts increase the pressure to act – and the opportunity for further development

With the upcoming quality contracts, quality development in long-term care is becoming even more important. For associations and institutions, this means that quality must not only be wanted, but must also be proven, documented, anchored in the organization and effectively implemented in everyday life. The regulatory background to Art. 58a KVG and the requirements of Art. 58g and 58d KVV are explained in more detail in the article Quality and Cost-Effectiveness .

This also increases the need for instruments that not only look good on paper, but also work in practice. A CIRS is not an additional tool, but a central component of modern quality management. It helps to make risks visible, to systematically analyze weaknesses and to derive concrete improvement measures from events – exactly what regulation requires.

Why now is the right time

Anyone who introduces a CIRS in long-term care today creates the basis for, among other things:

• Increased resident and patient safety
• Building a lived Just Culture
• Structured quality development
• Comprehensible documentation and risk analyses
• Less friction losses and liability risks in everyday life
• Resilient preparation for regulatory requirements

CIRS is more than an error message – it’s systematic learning

A CIRS is much more than a digital incident registration form. The real added value lies not in the report itself, but in what happens afterwards: structured analysis, measures, feedback into practice and sustainable improvement and process optimization.

For organizations in long-term care, this can mean making recurring medication risks visible, learning from fall events, recognizing communication problems at transitions or identifying stresses in everyday life at an early stage before real damage occurs.

A professional digital reporting system supports not only the recording, but also the evaluation, tracking of measures and the systematic further development of processes. You can find more information on the right solution for this on the H-CIRS Professional product page.

Just culture is the prerequisite for CIRS to work at all

A reporting system is only useful if employees have trust. This is exactly where Just Culture comes in. Rather than reflexively asking who made a mistake, this approach focuses on what happened, why it happened, and what conditions contributed to it.

This change of perspective is central for organizations that want to enable real learning processes. Those who only sanction individual errors prevent reports. On the other hand, those who create psychological safety promote transparency, responsibility and improvement.

This is particularly important in long-term care. The work is complex, often time-critical and strongly relationship-oriented. Employees therefore need an environment in which they can openly share observations without fear of unfair blame. A modern CIRS is therefore always a tool for promoting Just Culture. If you are interested, we recommend the blog series on Just Culture in Healthcare, in which we have dealt with this exciting topic in detail.

What Just Culture does in practice

A lived Just Culture not only strengthens the willingness to report. Among other things, it also improves:

• the trust in the team
• the quality of analyses
• Visibility into critical events
• the implementation of improvement measures
• the long-term safety and learning culture in the organization.

Local learning and cross-learning go hand in hand

A good CIRS in long-term care should not be thought of in isolation. Institutions benefit most when in-house learning is combined with industry-wide knowledge sharing.

This is an important point, especially for associations. They can not only offer their members a technical solution, but also create a common framework for joint and systematic learning. When multiple institutions use similar processes, risks can be identified earlier, patterns can be understood more quickly, and best practices can be shared more easily.

In this way, many individual reports create real added value for the entire industry.

Why Connecting to CIRRNET Is Relevant for Quality Management and Patient Safety

In the context of legal quality requirements, the ability to connect to a uniform network for reporting adverse events throughout Switzerland is becoming increasingly important. A suitable reporting and learning system should therefore be set up in such a way that it not only works internally, but also meets the requirements for comprehensive learning.

In Switzerland, CIRRNET from the Swiss Patient Safety Foundation is a national and well-established network for local error reporting systems. For long-term care facilities and associations, this connectivity is an important aspect not only because of regulatory requirements, but above all from the point of view of quality management. It can help to combine internal learning processes with higher-level findings, to better classify recurring risk patterns and to make the examination of safety-relevant events more systematic. The added value does not lie in the passing on of individual reports per se, but in the possibility of placing local findings in a larger professional context and gaining additional impetus for prevention and quality development.

All H-CIRS solutions from new-win meet these requirements and enable you to connect to the national CIRRNET network of the Swiss Patient Safety Foundation, which allows you to implement both regulatory and quality and patient safety requirements in a practical way and to put your own quality management on a broader learning basis.

Success story: What long-term care can learn from Spitex

A particularly exciting look into the near future of long-term care results from the development in the Spitex sector. Some time ago, the situation there was very similar: increasing regulatory requirements, increasing pressure on quality and the question of how an effective joint learning system can emerge from many individual organizations. It became apparent how important it is to address time-consuming and complex regulatory developments in order to create the conditions for transparency, learning and systematic improvement at an early stage. Many Spitex organisations introduced our H-CIRS Professional early and with foresight – either as an individual solution or via a community solution together with an association.

This is exactly where we were able to show how an association solution can work in practice, which is a crucial point, especially for smaller organizations. With our H-CIRS Community , we have created a community solution that allows an association to join a common learning system and at the same time bring many individual organizations on board. Instead of leaving each institution alone with the same questions, processes and technical hurdles, a common structure is created with standardized reporting forms, comparable evaluations, clear roles and cross-company learning.

This is a real success story for us: an association takes responsibility, creates a common framework and enables its members to enter into a reporting and learning system in a professional and practical way right from the start. It is precisely this approach that is also highly interesting for associations in long-term care.

We are also happy to recommend the guest article: Interview with the care expert Jennifer Kümmli.

What long-term care associations can now learn from this

Experience from the Spitex environment shows that associations have a key role to play. They can set standards, provide orientation, provide suitable tools and make it easier for their members to find a functioning learning system.

Instead of each institution having to solve technical, professional and organizational issues separately, an association can use a community solution to create a common infrastructure that is standardized and adaptable at the same time. This increases acceptance, simplifies rollout and training and strengthens the transfer of knowledge across institutional boundaries.

For long-term care, this means that the current phase around quality contracts is not only a challenge, but also an opportunity. Anyone who invests in a structured CIRS now creates the basis for quality awareness, systematic risk identification, a lived just culture and a credible safety culture.

Single solution or community solution – which makes sense?

Depending on the structure, size and objectives, a different approach may make sense for individual institutions and associations.

Single solution for individual institutions

A single solution is particularly suitable for nursing and retirement centers as well as other facilities that want to operate their reporting and learning system independently and control it internally. The most important factors here are easy handling, clear tracking of measures and good evaluability. Our modern and intuitive H-CIRS Professional offers a very good introduction to the professional solution.

Community solution for associations and associations

The H-CIRS community solution is particularly interesting for associations, networks and organizations with several affiliated institutions. It enables standardised processes, joint evaluations and cross-organisational learning – while at the same time introducing them in a way that conserves resources.

For the target group of care and retirement centers and social organizations, you can find further information here: Solutions for Homes and Social Organizations.

What individual organizations need now

For individual long-term care facilities, the initial situation is often very concrete: the demand for quality is increasing, audits and evidence are increasing, employees are under strain, and at the same time safety culture, learning processes and documentation should not become an additional bureaucratic effort.

What requirements a modern CIRS should meet

A good and effective CIRS in long-term care must not only be technically sensible, but also practicable in everyday life. Because only if a system is easy to use, it will actually be used.

A modern digital CIRS should:

• Be low-threshold, intuitive and mobile
• Lowering reporting barriers (anonymous with high acceptance)
• Enable structured analyses
• Support measures and follow-up processes
• Make evaluations and key figures available
• Promoting learning in a team
• Enable connection to CIRRNET
• Supporting Just Culture and Quality Management
• Connecting regulatory requirements to everyday life

This is exactly where the difference between a pure reporting form and a professional reporting and learning system becomes apparent.

With our H-CIRS solutions, from a reporting system to a lived safety culture

At new-win, we have been developing digital quality and reporting systems for the Swiss healthcare system for 25 years. Our goal is to strengthen patient safety, relieve employees and support organizations in recording risks in a structured way and learning from them.

For long-term care organizations, H-CIRS Professional offers a comprehensive solution for an effective reporting and learning system. For associations and associations that would like to set up many member institutions together, we offer the right platform for standardized processes, joint evaluations and cross-company learnings with H-CIRS Community . In this way, we combine safety culture, just culture, quality development and regulatory requirements in a solution that works reliably in everyday life and has established itself over the years.

You can find an overview of other reporting system solutions from new-win here: Innovative reporting systems.

Conclusion: Now is the right time

The next few years will be decisive for long-term care in Switzerland. The upcoming quality contracts, increasing expectations of transparency, the desire for a lived Just Culture and the need to effectively strengthen patient safety all point in the same direction: away from individual measures and towards systematic quality development. This is not an obligation, but an opportunity.

Those who invest now in a professional CIRS in long-term care position their organization or association for the future: with a stronger safety culture, better quality and clear regulatory compliance.

Associations can get their members on board with a joint solution, massively facilitate access to a professional learning system and set an industry-wide quality impulse. Individual institutions, on the other hand, gain a practical tool that makes everyday life easier instead of burdenful.

Why new-win is the right partner for your error management in the healthcare sector

• Swiss expertise – specially developed for the requirements of the Swiss healthcare system
• Scalable solutions – with suitable solutions for Just Culture integration regardless of the size of the organization
• Proven implementation – successfully implemented in leading healthcare organizations
• Continuous development – based on the latest findings

You will receive additional expertise in patient safety and error management from our partner PD Dr. med. Sven Staender – Pioneer in patient safety with over 30 years of experience in just culture and error management.

Request advice now

Do you want to set up your long-term care organization or association with foresight?

Then now is the right time to create the basis for an effective reporting and learning system. We would be happy to show you in a non-binding demo what a suitable solution with H-CIRS Professional or H-CIRS Community can look like for your institution or association.