Unity Health wanted culture of safety survey results that could do more than summarize responses. With American Data Network, the organization gained a managed SOPS® survey process, benchmarked reporting, heat maps, prioritization, raw data access, and support for broader patient safety data needs.
IN THIS CASE STUDY
The Problem: Unity Health Needed SOPS® Results Leaders Could Turn Into Action
The Path: ADN Managed the SOPS® Survey Process From Reporting to Deeper Analysis
The Outcome: From Survey Results to Patient Safety Priorities
The Conclusion: A Healthcare Data Partner for Survey Results, Abstraction, and Improvement Work
Unity Health had worked with American Data Network (ADN) for its 2021 culture of safety survey, took a different approach in 2023, and returned to ADN in 2025. The 2023 survey produced useful feedback, but leaders found it difficult to translate the results into priorities. “We didn’t really feel like we had actionable results from the previous survey,” said Timothy Copeland, Director, Quality & Manager, Risk at Unity Health.
The 2023 survey also overlapped with an employee engagement survey, and Copeland said the findings did not align or coordinate well with what the organization was seeing in employee engagement results.
For its 2025 survey, Unity Health wanted to return to the AHRQ SOPS® Hospital Survey. Copeland was familiar with the AHRQ survey from previous experience and knew the type of content, structure, and data the organization could expect from it. He also knew ADN could manage the survey process.
Trying to manage the survey internally would have been less effective. Copeland had administered similar work internally before and said it was difficult. Just as important, Unity Health would not have had access to the same benchmarking data, which helped make the decision to work with ADN easier.
The organization needed a process that could produce timely, benchmarked, leader-ready reporting and help teams move from survey results to patient safety priorities.
Unity Health partnered with ADN to administer its 2025 electronic patient safety culture survey for White County Medical Center and Specialty Care. The survey was open from November 10 to December 1, 2025, and used the AHRQ Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture® version 2.0. ADN administered the survey, aggregated the data, and compared Unity Health’s results with AHRQ’s 2024 SOPS® Hospital 2.0 Database.
“It just made it a turnkey process for us, to just take the report and then turn it into an action plan,” Copeland said.
The value was not just the standardized survey tool. ADN managed the process, delivered final reports one week ahead of schedule, and gave Unity Health more time to review the findings. Copeland described opening the reports as “like Christmas morning,” because the team had worked throughout the year to improve patient safety culture, encouraged staff to take the survey, waited for the results, and then received useful information that could actually help the organization move to the next step.
ADN’s reporting included the comparisons, heat maps, prioritization, and department-level views Unity Health needed to make the results usable for leaders. Copeland said the heat maps were especially useful for distributing results among departments so managers could see where they stood compared with other departments and which domains needed attention.
When Unity Health requested additional data for deeper review, ADN provided all 966 raw survey results along with AHRQ benchmark guidance. Copeland summed up the response in three words: “This is perfect.”
With the reports and raw data in hand, Unity Health began turning survey findings into patient safety priorities.
Using the SOPS® data, Unity Health identified five attributes and 10 tactics to help build patient safety culture. Copeland said the work gave the organization an opportunity to align the way teams talk about patient safety and encourage staff to think about how to reduce the risk of adverse events.
The results also helped the hospital identify two specific areas for improvement: Handoffs and Information Exchange, and Management Support for Patient Safety. Handoffs and Information Exchange was assigned to the organization’s developing nursing quality council, while Management Support for Patient Safety supported broader work around transparency, root cause analysis, and blame-free conversations about errors.
Unity Health also took the analysis beyond the standard report. The organization stratified survey-level data by physicians, residents, and nursing staff, comparing groups across domains, overall patient safety culture perspective, and letter grade. Copeland said the deeper analysis “opened some eyes” and “got people interested in doing some things that they needed to be doing to make Unity Health a safer facility.”
The data also supported unit-level communication. Copeland said Unity Health used unit-specific responses on team huddle boards to keep attention focused on patient safety.
The same value Unity Health saw in the SOPS® project carried into clinical data abstraction. Copeland said ADN’s sepsis abstraction support enabled the organization to “focus more on what we do with the data as opposed to collecting the data.”
That shift had operational and financial value. Outsourcing sepsis abstraction supported internal capacity and created cost savings, and Copeland noted that performance remained stable after the transition to outsourcing.
For Copeland, the broader value of working with ADN came down to focus and expertise. He said access to specialized expertise was valuable because ADN focuses on safety, abstraction, and data analysis every day.
Key Outcomes
Unity Health’s 2025 SOPS® project shows the value of working with a partner that understands both the technical requirements of survey administration and the practical realities of hospital quality work.
ADN managed the survey process, delivered reports ahead of schedule, provided benchmarked analysis, and supported deeper review with raw data. That combination gave Unity Health a more efficient path from survey administration to department conversations, huddle board communication, and improvement planning. Together, the SOPS® and sepsis abstraction work showed how ADN could support Unity Health across connected quality and patient safety data needs, not just a single project.
Copeland said Unity Health had to send emails, but there was not much additional work required before ADN returned data that was “very actionable.”
A SOPS® survey is only as useful as what leaders can do with the results after the survey closes. The challenge is not collecting responses. It is turning survey data into clear priorities, useful comparisons, department-level conversations, and action plans that keep patient safety work moving forward.
Unity Health’s experience shows the value of a partner who can support both the mechanics of the survey and the broader data needs that surround patient safety work. With American Data Network, hospitals gain more than a survey vendor: a healthcare data partner whose services span culture of safety surveys, clinical data abstraction, benchmarking, patient safety reporting, and other quality improvement needs. For teams managing complex patient safety and quality data, that means clearer priorities, stronger conversations, and more focused improvement work.
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