Risk management in healthcare means using different strategies to find and solve issues that may occur in the future. These complications may become the cause of the patient’s death or affect the healthcare facility itself. Risk management includes many steps, such as exploring risks, monitoring them carefully, understanding how serious and complicated they are, and then taking action to stop them. Different healthcare organizations, such as hospitals and clinics, use various risk management techniques to keep their patients safe and healthy.
They are also making efforts to protect their money, reputation, and place in the community. This helps them to stay approved by crucial groups and get fair payment for their services. Hospitals can avoid mistakes, reduce accidents, and improve the quality of care through better managing risks. So, with proper risk management, healthcare centres work better, keep patients safe, and increase trust with people who blindly trust them. Proper risk management is necessary to run a good healthcare service.
What is risk management in healthcare?
There is no one way to define risk management in healthcare because risk means the chances that issues will happen and become the reason to harm patients, staff, or the healthcare organization. Risk always happens when a threat takes advantage of a weakness.
Traditionally, risk management means adopting different ways to find, check, and reduce risks to keep patients safe, reduce legal issues, and prevent money loss.
However, using this concept has the potential to allow the various parts of the organization to work independently and on their own risks without communicating with one another.
Being disconnected helps lead to poor training, bad communication, and a lack of teamwork, which helps to diminish risk management. In order to improve risk management in healthcare, all parts of the organization need to be connected to allow cooperation and information sharing for the safety of patients and staff.
Why is risk management important in healthcare?
In the healthcare industry, effective risk management is more than just solving problems after they happen. It makes sure that patients are safe and getting the best treatment. Under effective risk management, hospitals and clinics have to follow some important rules and maintain their services high quality.
It is about building a place where people always try to do their best, patients get the right treatment and care all the time.
There are some important areas to monitor for risk. It includes:
- How patients are treated and diseases are diagnosed
- Treating them with proper medicines
- Using medical tools and technology effectively
- Train the staff well and follow important rules
By keeping attention on these parts, healthcare providers can lessen the chances of mistakes and improve care for everyone.
8 risk areas included in Enterprise Risk Management(ERM)
- Operational
- Clinical/patient safety
- Strategic
- Financial
- Human Capital
- Legal & Regulatory
- Technological
- Environmental- and Infrastructure-Based Hazards
1. Operational
Operational risks occur when there is a failure in a company’s processes or systems, or a staff person inadvertently causes risk to the business. Some examples can include inadequate responses to a data breach, a failure in a data backup system, or a staff person setting up software incorrectly, which reduces overall software security.
Taking a close look at all operations in healthcare can identify where controls can be implemented to mitigate these risks, such as how to provide back-up support for data systems. Performance enhancements, such as applying best practices for software development to produce safer and more dependable applications, may also be found by reviewing operational procedures. These results enhance the standard of healthcare services while lowering business risk.
2. Clinical/patient safety
Clinical or patient safety simply means keeping patients safe, especially when they get medical care. This includes all those who are admitted to hospitals or living in care homes, or anyone getting any type of medical services. Risk may include treating patients with the wrong medicines, making mistakes during surgery, mixing up patient identities, and many more.
Most of the time, people who manage risks can better handle these problems and find solutions.
Most of these safety risks are well known. People who manage risks can find checklists to help prevent these problems. For example, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) updated guidelines in 2009 to prevent catheter-related infections by examining patient safety.
3. Strategic
Strategic risks arise when an organization fails to adapt or make appropriate directional movement and avoid current solutions and/or patient needs. In addition, if an organization is delayed in adapting its operations for new regulations, for example. Strategic risks can create a competitive disadvantage, brand reputation damage, and/or legal exposure to their stakeholders.
In healthcare, Strategic risks can occur throughout the business, including general operations, insurance sectors, and any media or marketing activity. Ascertaining strategic risks will help support improving operational tasks safely and efficiently.
4. Financial
In healthcare, money-related issues can come from things that healthcare centres can control, such as fraud, lawsuits, fines, etc. At the same time, issues can also come from things that the organization can not control, such as increasing costs for machines, unpaid bills, or high interest rates. No matter that the organization can never stop these things properly, but can find ways to lessen their effects. For example, in case of higher machine cost or interest rates, the organization might take smart action to lease a machine with a fixed price. This can lead to money saved over time.
5. Human Capital
In healthcare, a group of workers is important. During COVID-19, many healthcare organizations saw the importance of group work. It is essential to keep workers safe and secure. This helps to stop sickness, injuries, feeling unhappy, and losing workers.
Healthcare groups should be alerted to the risks that hurt workers. They should also explore new strategies that make workers happy and satisfied. For this purpose, organizations have to set the rules that allow workers to openly share their feelings. In this way, workers can happily work and keep the workplace good for everyone.
6. Legal and regulatory
The legal risk area is defined as not knowing or complying with the rules imposed by the government. A Dallas, Texas hospital must comply with many laws, such as HIPAA, Medicare, OSHA, Title III of the Texas Health and Safety Code, and the fire safety rules of Dallas.
When rules are reviewed in isolation, it becomes burdensome and confusing. However, by reviewing the rules in aggregate, you will find that similar rules can be treated together. Fire safety has rules for Dallas, OSHA, and Medicare that can be treated together. By treating them in aggregate, the burden of compliance will be much less.
7. Technology
The technology risk field covers not only data and software but also the devices and computers on which they operate. It might also extend to how companies operate daily operations and employ smart machines to make choices, depending on what the company’s risk plans are.
Good opportunities in this space arise from the way various technologies integrate. For instance, if patient appointment software is integrated with the office system and health records system, it can improve things for patients, accelerate billing and payments, and ensure messages are safe and private, obeying such regulations as HIPAA.
8. Environmental- and Infrastructure-Based Hazards
The hazard area is about all kinds of risks while a business isn’t operating. In this area, we include natural disasters such as storms or building problems; fixing problems or improvements to buildings; and soon, how hospitals prepare for following outbreaks of new diseases like COVID-19.
In this area, it is unclear who assesses the risks; however, it does allow a company to show it is committed to reducing risks in its operations, patient safety, finances, and for its employees. This supports the company’s reputation and readiness for the unknown.
How does Oxford Training Centre help in managing risk well?
In managing Healthcare risk, we are not only needing to consider the safety of patients, management of the resources available, but also how to continually improve the quality of care delivered. The Oxford Training Centre offers excellent Healthcare Management Training Courses that will help to equip Healthcare professionals with the skills and knowledge they need to identify, assess, and reduce risk.
By learning from experts in the field of Healthcare, they can improve their confidence when managing difficulties within their practice and ultimately enhance the outcomes of patients and organizations. Choose Oxford Training Centre to build a safer and stronger healthcare future.