Comparing rates of adverse events detected in incident reporting and the Global Trigger Tool: a systematic review.

The greater than ten-fold gap between the detection rates of the Global Trigger Tool and incident reporting systems is strong evidence that the rate of adverse events collected in incident reporting systems in hospitals should not be used to measure or as a proxy for the level of safety of a hospital. Incident reporting systems should be recognised for their strengths which are to detect rare, serious and new incident types, and to enable analysis of contributing and contextual factors to develop preventive and corrective strategies.Health systems should use multiple patient safety data sources to prioritise interventions and promote a cycle of action and improvement based on data rather than merely just collecting and analysing information.