Latest / Off the Chart: A Business of Medicine Podcast / S1 Ep130: The true cost of workplace violence, with Andrea Greco of CENTEGIX
Transcript
- 0:00 Have to take a step back and look at the full impact that violence has within healthcare organization, employee satisfaction, both their perceived and actual safety, the potential impact to quality of patient care, as well as a financial impact. When they look at all of those things together, I think they realize that the cost of inaction is starting to outweigh the cost of what we hope things just get better. Welcome to off 0:37 the chart of business of medicine podcast featuring lively and informative conversations with healthcare experts, opinion leaders and practicing physicians about the challenges facing doctors and medical practices. My name is Austin Luttrell. I'm the associate editor of medical economics, and I'd like to thank you for joining us today before we get started. Just a quick note, physicians practice will be hosting practice Academy's new practice management track on Thursday, March 19. It's a virtual learning experience is designed for physicians and practice administrators, looking for practical, real world strategies to strengthen operations, improve performance and build more resilient practices. Speakers include Anders Gilberg of MGMA, Bronson Cox of encoded Justin, Lamb of cool blue, VA and Mark Herzog of Vera. Dime. You can register today by clicking the link in the show notes or by going to registration.physicianspractice.com that said in today's episode I sat down with the senior vice president of healthcare safety at sentegix. We talked about the findings from sentex is 2026 healthcare Trends Report, which makes the case that workplace violence has moved from a security concern to a core driver of staffing instability, regulatory exposure and financial performance. Andrea explains what practice leaders should take from the data, including why the wrestlers now spike at nearly 300% during a narrow window of the morning, and why hallways and exam rooms remain most dangerous spaces in the care setting. Andrea, thank you for joining us, and now let's get into the episode. 1:58 Thank you so much for joining us today. 2:00 Yeah, thanks for having me looking forward to our conversation today, 2:04 we're going to be talking a bit about stitches annual healthcare Trends report for 2026 which was released at the end of 2025 I guess, just to kind of jump into it, the report makes it pretty clear that workplace violence is a major financial and operational risk and a core driver of workplace instability. Obviously, 61% of nurses in the report said that they plan to leave their job within the next 12 months for practices. From a practice angle, how should safety planning evolve when violence is treated as, I mean, not just a security issue, but as a risk to business? 2:37 When I think that, to understand that, you have to take a step back and look at the full impact that violence has within healthcare organization, and that when leaders then prioritize and fund safety initiatives, because they see that full picture that it has on employee satisfaction, both their perceived and actual safety, the potential impact To quality of patient care, as well as a financial impact. When they look at all of those things together, I think they realize that the cost of inaction is starting to outweigh the cost of what we hope things just get better. We also think that a shift in mindset is really needed to help kind of gain that clarity and Kate and gain that understanding, so that as we talked about the strategic solutions, but a layered, comprehensive safety strategy, not just a plan on paper, but a strategy that everyone knows how to execute on and within, is really important, versus siloed or kind of standalone solutions that are that are put in place to just solve one problem at a time. 3:45 So looking back to last year's report, the rest alerts peaked on certain days of the week. Last year it was Fridays, Saturdays and Wednesdays. This year, the alerts, they kind of leveled out across all seven days, with a slight dip on Sundays and Mondays. What can we take away from that trend, 4:01 we were a little surprised to see such a change. But what I think that shows us is that every day, there's risk involved in the healthcare setting when providing care around around violence. So when we saw that that leveled out, really, our message is plan accordingly, plan to stay on top of the data continuously being now, being analytical around what's happening within your organization, and know where you need to to address things, because it could be any day, any time of the day, that things are happening. 4:33 The data also shows a 300% spike in duress alerts between 8:30am and 12:15pm what kind of I guess, is the reaction to that, and what can practices take away from that spike? I mean, are there specific clinical workflows that tend to cluster in that window that could leave practice staff or physicians more vulnerable to violence? 4:52 There's always a lot happening during the day in a care setting, but during that time period, particularly, there is a lot going on. So. Morning rounds, when you think about visitors starting to to enter in the facility, as well planning for discharge for that day again, a lot of activity and a lot of emotions of whether or not you stay or go from from the hospital that day, lunch coverage, things happen during that time. Other shift changes. So there's a lot going on that that change, that interruption of maybe what you were expecting can really, really trigger an aggressive behavior from patients or family members or the like. So there's a lot going on during that timeframe that people have to be maybe a little more flexible around. And sometimes that can be hard to do. 5:35 90% of alerts involved an individual staff member needing support, rather than, you know, a building wide or a campus wide escalation, what's the most effective way for practices to structure their internal response? I mean, who should be alerted, how fast and kind of what through what channels? 5:53 Well, what we see the most effective, particularly in our healthcare setting, is that stat is true across the entire customer base at stedx, wherever we are deployed, but it maintaining being immediate. So again, that alert isn't is immediately delivered to those that need to respond to offer aid, and that it maintains it being a discrete notification element. We find that that really goes hand in hand with de escalation training and other tools and resources that are provided to healthcare workers to to maintain a calm working environment and also protect themselves. So then again, being immediate discrete. And then when we look at the responders that come it can, it can go everywhere, from a unit leader or leaders that that are on that floor and that facility, to security staff, and then all the way to local law enforcement, if there's a standalone clinic as an example that doesn't have other leadership or security maybe on site at the time, and their first line of defense is local law enforcement. So what we really focus in on is like organizations should do, understand what's happening within their four walls, what resources they have available to them, and then customize and align our alert delivery to the right responders for that organization and in particular, that specific location itself, so it can be really unique. And while we have best practices, again, we meet every organization where they are and make sure that we do deliver that that quick aid as soon as possible, 7:27 with nearly half of the duress alerts tied to certain aggressive behavior, what types of situations are most often escalating in routine care settings, according to the report, 7:37 so we see that encounters often happen Not only in patient rooms, but in hallways right. So away from that, that patient care setting itself between staff and patients and family members as well, and we also, unfortunately see as tensions grow, that there are also altercations between staff themselves. I mean, we've seen that from both covid and beyond just the tension and kind of the you know, the air in care settings is a bit different. Expectations are different, allowance for behavior is different. And so again, we see that happening a variety of kind of different relationships and things happening in all different places. 8:34 Hey there. Keith Reynolds here and welcome to the p2 management minute in just 60 seconds, we deliver proven, real world tactics you can plug into your practice today, whether that means speeding up check in, lifting staff morale or nudging patient satisfaction north, no theory, no fluff, just the kind of guidance that fits between appointments and moves the needle before lunch. But the best ideas don't all come from our newsroom. They come from you got a clever workflow, hack, an employee engagement win or a lesson learned the hard way. I want to feature it. Shoot me an email at K Reynolds at mjh life sciences.com with your topic, quick outline or even a smartphone clip. We'll handle the rest and get your insights in front of your peers nationwide. Let's make every minute count together. Thanks for watching, and I'll see you in the next p2 management minute. 9:25 Behavioral incidents are most commonly triggered in hallways like you mentioned. Are, you know, exam rooms at nurses stations? Is there a way that practices could redesign or better protect those vulnerable areas? 9:38 Well, one of the things that you're thinking about about minimizing isolation is obvious, but it can be difficult to accomplish when you think about how care settings are constructed, and so that's really why that accelerated response that we enable when support is needed is critical, and we focus that on as being one of our most crucial elements. Yes, but it's also important to think about when we initiate alerts like through our system itself. That's why that exact location information is really important as well, so that if someone is alone or is in an isolated area, you know exactly where they are without having to have eyes on them first, you can go directly there. 10:25 In terms of that safety technology, the report notes a growing resistance to real time location system based safety tools that continuously track staff where they are throughout a building or campus based on what you're seeing. How do privacy concerns affect the adoption of that kind of technology in healthcare. And I 10:44 think, you know, healthcare workers, the trained professionals, they don't want to be to be tracked. We've seen a lot of that voice from our own users. Nursing unions across the country have also vocalized this strongly, that you don't want to be in a situation where a solution is provided to aid a worker, but they don't want to wear it because they don't want to be tracked, because there are unsure if that will be used in a punitive way against them in some other, other manner. So when you stay focused on safety, being the forefront of your of your solution, and for us, that means we're only tracking the badge and the badge, where, when an alert is initiated and when that help is needed, you can see the rise in an adoption and appreciation of the tool, investment itself, because it's seen truly As a solution designed to provide a safer culture within the organization, and a speedy response when help is needed, rather than being something that is again seen as punitive and tracked around other items that that are not centered in that focus on on safety and keeping them safe in their in their work environment. 12:00 Sure, the report also shows that preventing even a small amount of turnover can save practices significant amount of money. And obviously that turnover, it comes from that that workplace violence, as we talked about, what numbers should practices look at in terms of ROI to decide whether an investment into different safety technology or or some other kind of safety or violence prevention is worth it, 12:22 we spent quite a bit of time in 2025 trying to quantify that for our customers and for ourselves, that we understood the value that our solution delivers. And so we have a new ROI calculator and report where we examine just that. What are the average costs per incident by estimating the work loss costs, labor costs for backup staffing that sometimes needed repair of damaged infrastructure, if that, if that's the case as well, but also certainly looking at retention and recruitment cost, and when there is an incident involved workers compensation claims and other medical expenses. So we really looked at all these different elements or that that have a true cost that can be identified with them to to help organizations take a look at the real cost, the dollars and cents, costs of, again, less or no action taken around protecting and keeping their staff safe. So again, we put that all on a calculator that we have, we have looked at, what does it normally take to replace a nurse? As an example, it's over $60,000 a year just to or $60,000 to replace one, one single nurse. And as you look at specialties and physicians, that number is exponentially gross. We looked at average workers comp claims, et cetera and things like that, to help guide organizations to do that calculation themselves, to see what that impact really is. We also consider turnover rate, and again, those costs associated with not just the the retention of those but all the training and all the time spent of re recurring elements that have to happen to get someone up to speed to provide quality care within an organization, and in some organizations, there's also an element of of taking a hard look at Insurance costs. There might be some ability to impact their insurance costs when they are able to reduce the amount of incidents that happen within the organization. So there's a lot of different level levers to pull when you also stay focused on safety of the employees, safety of your of your patients, the quality of care, but then look at that financial impact can really be eye opening Great. 14:43 Is there anything more on the data that we might have missed or glossed over? 14:48 I don't think anything that we missed. But maybe, if I had to leave us with three themes as we think about 2026 is that as as folks are looking at events. Evaluating their their safety planning, the tools and the investments that they've made to protect their staff and to provide quality care, is to to think about three things. One is that that they need to have a workforce centric approach, right? That that safety initiatives really need to be aligned with their core business goals, like things like retention and profitability. We talked about that a little bit, but but make sure it's also a solution that's going to be adopted. Again, we talked about the less attractive or RTLs options and things like that. So again, as a investment is only as good as it's as it's used right in the value that's actually delivered. The second one is demand for ROI. Again, we talked about our creation of an ROI calculator report for use for both prospects and our existing customers, but safety investments, they really need to demonstrate measurable improvements in financial performance and really highlight that the cost of inaction to help make drive some urgency around decisions and increased policies procedures and investments in safety within the organization, and then third accountability, really, we've seen, unfortunately, a lot of really high profile incidents happen within the last year. In particular, there's pending legislation out there now move beyond both at the state level, but at the federal level, things like the Save act and at the state level, Illinois, SB, 1435, but they're driving greater accountability for workplace safety and not just having kind of a check the box plan On paper, but really helping hold organizations and communities accountable to take action and to have, you know, positive plans in place that are effective and real again, not just to check the box on paper. So those are exciting things to see move the trend. And so maybe we'll start to see more of improvement. I think each year we talk about the consistency of the level of violence happening, and so we really want to be part of making a proactive change to lessening that happening. But when it does happen, to be there for help, to be on its way as quick as possible. So hopefully those insights helped 17:22 you absolutely. Andre Greco, thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you once again, it 17:41 was Andre Greco, the Senior Vice President of healthcare safety at synthetics, on behalf of the whole medical economics and physicians practice teams, I'd like to thank you for listening to the show and ask you to please subscribe so you don't miss the next episode, and don't forget, physicians practice will be hosting practice Academy's new practice management track on Thursday, March 19, featuring practical, actionable education for physicians and Practice administrators. You can register today by clicking the link in the show notes or by going to registration DOT physicians practice.com as always, be sure to check back on Monday and Thursday mornings for the latest conversations with experts, sharing strategies, stories and solutions for your practice. You can find us by searching off the chart wherever you get your podcasts. Also, if you'd like the best stories that medical economics and physicians practice published delivered straight to your email six days of the week. Subscribe to our newsletters at medical economics.com and physicians practice calm off the chart, a business of medicine podcast is executive produced by Chris mazzolini and Keith Reynolds and produced by Austin Luttrell. Medical economics and physicians practice are both members of the mjh Life Sciences family. Thank you. You.