PHOENIX—Warning alerts used by hospitals and health care organizations known as trigger tools provide risk managers various benefits but also open the door to exposures.

Trigger tools, used by nearly all health care organizations, provide a warning or alert for hospital staff to evaluate a situation with a focus to avoid patient injury, said panelists at the American Society for Healthcare Risk Management Conference and Exhibition in Phoenix this week.

“It's a warning to check the engine,” said Fay A. Rozovsky, principal and founder of consultant The Rozovsky Group Inc. in Bloomfield, Conn.

There are various trigger tools, such as audible triggers, sensor triggers, mechanical triggers and digital triggers, Mr. Rozovsky said. They cover various categories such as active surveillance, post-event alarms and warnings of potential adverse events.

An example of trigger tool use is alarms on doorways in behavioral health units that sound if a patient breaches the unit. They also are used during concurrent patient rounds checking for indicators of potential infections, and on beds or wheelchairs that signal if a patient is getting up to prevent a fall.

But trigger tools can become a “smoking gun” if used incorrectly and can lead to potential liabilities, the panelist said during the session, “‘But You Should Have Known!' Risk Managing Trigger Tools.”

“Nothing is wrong with the trigger tools; it's how the humanoids use them,” Ms. Rozovsky.

For example, audio alarms may become ineffective over time as hospital staff constantly “are in a sea of white noise,” she said.

“Knowledge is a burden,” Ms. Rozovsky said. If state agencies or the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services learn that warnings from trigger tools were ignored after an investigation involving allegations of patient harm, that hospital may potentially be liable.

Also, negligence risk exposures can surface if a causal link between the failures to adhere to the trigger tool standard results in patient harm, Ms. Rozovsky said.

A strategy to avoid trigger tool exposures is to clearly identify what trigger tools will be used, how they will be implemented and enterprise-wide education, said Kathleen Connolly, president of risk management consulting firm KT Connolly & Associates L.L.C. in Charlotte, N.C., during the session.

Ms. Connolly also suggested establishing procedures that establish who gets the alert and who acts on the alert.