Every healthcare leader knows it: when a major incident unfolds, there’s no room for confusion or delay. One misstep—a wrong-site surgery, a security breach, or a violent attack on an employee—can ripple across departments, compromise patient safety, and erode hard-earned trust. Yet too often, teams scramble without a clear major incident management process, losing precious time when it matters most.
That’s why every healthcare organization needs a robust plan for managing safety events—a clear, structured approach that ensures quick response, clear communication, and continuous improvement. Without it, even small delays or missteps can have serious consequences for patient outcomes, staff safety, and regulatory compliance.
This article outlines five proven strategies to improve your approach to major incident management, from clarifying staff responsibilities to leveraging modern reporting systems that support better coordination and learning.
In the first minutes of a major incident, confusion about who should act—and how—can be just as dangerous as the incident itself. Without clearly defined roles and a structured chain of escalation, staff may hesitate, miscommunicate, or duplicate efforts, wasting precious time and compromising safety.
It’s no surprise, then, that CRICO Strategies found that communication breakdowns—often caused by unclear responsibilities and poor handoffs—contributed to 30% of 23,000 medical malpractice lawsuits.
A well-defined major incident management process should assign specific responsibilities at each stage of the response. For example:
To guide this, develop a tiered escalation matrix that details what types of incidents require which responses—and who to contact at each level. The matrix should account for both clinical and non-clinical events like IT outages and security threats.
A study conducted by Denver Health Medical Center found that implementing a standardized escalation process in their Medical Intensive Care Unit decreased their average incident resolution time by 49%.
Even experienced teams need guidance during high-stress events. That’s why standard operation procedures (SOPs) are a cornerstone of an effective major incident management process—they provide a reliable roadmap when rapid action is required.
In fact, one study found that by implementing SOPs in surgery units, the rate of planning and preparation mistakes decreased by almost 50%.
Your SOPs should outline:
These procedures should be written in clear, accessible language and stored where staff can easily find them—ideally integrated into your organization’s digital systems or incident management platform.
Also consider SOPs for less traditional but increasingly relevant scenarios, like ransomware attacks or social media crises, which may fall outside traditional clinical emergencies but still require a coordinated response.
Having a plan is not enough; staff must be trained to carry it out confidently and correctly. Training ensures that every member of your team understands their role in the major incident management process and feels prepared to act under pressure.
Effective training includes:
Each training session should conclude with a structured debrief. Ask participants what worked, what didn’t, and what questions arose. These insights help improve both staff confidence and the strength of your major incident management process.
Importantly, don’t treat training as a one-time compliance activity. The most effective organizations build response readiness into their safety culture—treating it as an ongoing investment in both patient safety and operational resilience.
After every major incident, the work isn’t done. To prevent recurrence, it’s essential to reflect on what happened, analyze contributing factors, and integrate those findings into future preparedness efforts.
Your major incident management process should include a structured post-incident review process, ideally conducted within 48 hours of the event. This review should:
Organizations that commit to this kind of continuous improvement loop are far more likely to see long-term gains in patient safety, risk reduction, and staff engagement.
Learning loops also reinforce accountability—showing staff that incidents are taken seriously and used to improve systems, not to assign blame.
Technology is a powerful enabler of rapid, coordinated incident response. Manual reporting processes such as handwritten forms or emails are prone to delays, inconsistencies, and missed opportunities for learning.
Implementing a digital incident reporting and management system transforms your entire major incident management process by:
The system should also support secure collaboration between clinical, administrative, IT, and safety teams—particularly in complex incidents that span multiple departments.
In a high-pressure, resource-stretched healthcare setting, major incidents are inevitable—but disorganized responses don’t have to be. A proactive, well-executed major incident management process protects patients, supports staff, and builds lasting organizational resilience.
By defining roles, standardizing procedures, investing in training, learning from every event, and using the right tools, your organization can be ready to respond when it matters most.
See how Performance Health Partners’ best-in-class incident management system can streamline your major incident management process. Book a demo today.