Share this article Share this article CHICAGO, Feb. 2, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The COVID-19 pandemic has heightened healthcare consumers' concerns about receiving care in a hospital system, according to a new survey conducted by SwipeSense, the industry's leading patient safety platform. The survey found that 73% of consumers feel concerned or extremely concerned about hospital safety, which represents a 46% increase in their level of concern since the onset of COVID-19. Even more significantly, the survey found that healthcare consumers overwhelmingly feel that the use of technology to support patient safety initiatives would increase how safe they feel receiving care – with 83% reporting they would feel safer with contact tracing technology in place. Despite this strong patient preference, many hospitals still rely on manual contact tracing for COVID-19 and other infectious outbreaks. But these antiquated methods to determine exposure are time-consuming, often unreliable, and leave staff and patients at risk. In contrast, hospitals can leverage technology with real-time, employee-level data to automatically capture all contacts and empower faster, more accurate infection control.