Did you know that your organization is liable for the safekeeping and management of the personal belongings of your patients? The fact is you are probably on the hook even if you have them sign a waiver upon admission.

Liability Risks for Mismanagement of Patient Property

Several states have laws under their civil codes that will address this problem. There is also case law that establishes the rights of patients, or their next of kin, to seek civil damages for lost or stolen items.

There have been thousands of cases where patients have lost their property while an inpatient in a hospital. Most of the time it can be attributed to a “broken process” that the organization has in place and most people do not understand. So what does that mean? Your organization can have the best policy in place, and of course the best intentions, however if your staff does not follow the proper protocol items will come up missing.

Often times when investigating cases of missing property, it can be traced back to the patient’s actions that caused the item to be misplaced, such as they leave their dentures, glasses, or hearing aids on their food tray or bed. That happens more often than someone stealing the items. If they are left on the tray, or in the linen, the hospital needs to have a process to watch for that and mitigate the problem. Some hospitals have come up with personal caddies for the patients to place these items, and others have staff that has been trained to look for these items before they leave the room. As a backup plan many organizations also train staff to watch items coming into the food service tray line or the soiled laundry incoming point.

Who Manages Patient Property

The answer to this question can be a challenge to find in many hospitals. In fact, there are hospitals that I have found that literally everyone thought someone else was handling the problem and the reality was no one was doing so.

Still other healthcare organizations were found to have several departments managing the issue, and yet none of them were communicating with the others. In some cases since security handles Lost & Found they have been tasked with collecting and managing patient property. However, the main issue is that security does not know who the property belongs to in many cases so there is no way to find the owners and return the items.

Case in point, what is most often the problem is that when patients are transferred to a step-down unit many times their personal property does not make the move with them. Later, normally when housekeeping is cleaning the room, the items are discovered and given to the floor nursing staff, which normally would place it in a closet until such time the closet becomes full and then they call security. By this time the actual owner to the property has been forgotten.

Lost and Found vs. Mismanaged Patient Property

Is the management of your patient property and lost and found services separate? If so do they coordinate with each other and have one central repository for what is being stored within the organization?

Root Cause Analysis

I have conducted root cause analysis’ (RCA) in the past and the results were quite clear as to where the problem starts. In many cases prior to doing a deep dive into the problem there was almost always a uniform opinion that the problem was security’s to solve, as they were responsible. However, that was not the case.

The fact of the matter was that it was easy to trace back to the EMS crews and Emergency department staff as to where most of the cases of mismanaged patient property originated. In other cases the problem always pointed back to the movement of the patients throughout the hospital, and how their property was not moved with them and then mismanaged.

This issue with the EMS crews was that they delivered the patients to the ER and did not turn over the patient’s property at that time. Most often the case was that they had cut the patients clothes off, and the clothes were soaked in body fluids or other hazardous materials, and therefore they were discarded. In other cases the issue was that the patient’s identification, medications, or insurance cards were lost somewhere between the ambulance and the ER.

Regarding the ER staff, it was often found that the patient’s property was placed in the room that the patient started in, but did not make the move when they were moved to surgery, inpatient units, or even radiology.

Regardless of the fact that the issue can start anywhere along the chain of custody or control of the patients property, organizations must understand the issue and work to develop a mitigation plan that eliminates this issue.

Statutory and Regulatory Requirements

Do you hold items in either category for the property time required by state law? Yes, states do have laws that address the handling of a private person’s property and lost and found. This revelation has caused some healthcare leaders to require an immediate overhaul of their processes, and rightfully so.

There is also case law regarding this problem, and judgments against hospitals have been made in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.