[What are hospitals and primary care doing to mitigate the social impact of serious adverse events]

Objective: To explore what hospitals and primary care (PC) are doing to reduce the negative social impact of a serious adverse event (AE).

Methods: We surveyed 195 hospital (n=113) and PC (n=82) managers from eight autonomous communities to explore the level of implementation of five interventions recommended after an AE to protect the reputation of healthcare institutions.

Results: Most institutions (70, 45.2% PC, and 85, 54.8% hospitals) did not have a crisis plan to protect their reputation after an AE. Internal (p=0.0001) and external (p=0.012) communications were addressed better in PC than in hospitals. Very few institutions had defined the managers' role in case of an AE (10.7% hospitals versus 6.25% PC).

Conclusion: A majority of healthcare institutions have not planned crisis intervention after an AE with severe consequences nor have they defined plans to recover citizens' trust after an AE.