Risk Managment

Risk Management in Healthcare

Lisa Carnley

[Institutional Affiliation(s)]

Author Note

Risk Management is an integral component for the health care facilities and organizations. It is the duty of the health care facilities to provide their patients, employees, and physicians with an environment that has minimal or no risk and provide them with a high level of security in their services. To prevent the loss and risks to the organization a formal organization-wide risk management plan is required to keep the safety at first priority. The plan is important to implement any risk management program and to provide guidance to the organizational services that are based on fostering a safe environment. Activities involved in the risk management plan is to identify, analyze and evaluate the risk by selecting the most appropriate methods for correcting or eliminating them CITATION Flo \l 1033 (Florence Kavaler). This paper aims at identifying a sample risk management plan and providing a detailed analysis of it.

The risk management plan that is selected for the purpose of this assignment is aimed at the personnel safety and providing the employees, patients, visitors, volunteers and physicians with the environment in which they can feel safe and don’t feel any threat of loss. The reason for choosing this plan as the sample is based on the fact that it covers vast areas of a health care organization and is targeted at the overall safety and risk elimination from it. This plan is linked with the organizational mission, vision, goals, and objectives. The plan covers all the important areas of the healthcare facilitation. Moreover, it is aimed at protecting the assets of the company including the human assets, encouraging the culture of safety of an organization and facilitate the safety and risk issues.

It also covers that in the case any untoward event happens, how its severity and frequency can be reduced and the financial matters losses related to the claims can be covered. Another objective linked with this plan is that it focuses on safeguarding the confidentiality of the documents and it provides an operational linkage of the plan with the medical staff. Furthermore, the plan is detailed enough to discuss all the administrative bodies taking part in the plan to accomplish. It also covers the aspects of authority, scope, and structure of the risk management plan. Moreover, the plan has the process to be adopted for risk management as an integral part of the plan. The treatment and control of risk is also an evident aspect of the chosen plan. It ends with the confidentiality statement that the documents related to the risk management plan are only to be used by the professional staff and the secrecy will be maintained. The plan is a comprehensive one needed to save the concerned healthcare facilitation from all the potential risks.

The basic administrative steps involved in the risk management plan in any health care facility involves establishing the context, identifying the risk, analyzing them, evaluation of risks and then treating and managing them CITATION Ali16 \l 1033 (Alam, 2016). The context of risk management is very important in identifying and managing risks. When it comes to patient care, ICU, Emergency room and operating room are of high priority. In the plan under consideration, the board charges the vice chancellor to identify and analyze the loss exposures.

The first step always involves identifying risks and threats that have the likelihood of occurrence. The next step in the plan is to evaluate the identified risks and employ the risk mitigation strategies to reduce the loss. After that, the strategies employed are monitored, evaluated and improved to increase the effectiveness of the risk management plan. Another stage involved in the administrative process is to integrate the clinical risk findings with medical center improvement initiatives.

For the sake of risk identification, assessment and analysis the data sources that can be used include the reports related to incidents and adverse events. Survey reports are also an effective source to identify organizational risks. The risk treatment includes the investigation, disclosure, critical event responses and internal claims. However, they are not limited to these. The treatment plan can be reactive and proactive. The CEO and CNO are responsible for reporting the elements of his or her activities. Any malpractices must be reported to the environmental health and safety committee on a generic basis. Monitoring and evaluation of the malpractices must be reported to the medical staff office, and any corrective action will be performed by the multitude if personnel as depending upon the situation.

The health care agencies are responsible for the administration of safe healthcare in the US. These agencies though do not directly related to risk management and prevention, but all of them aims at safe health care services to the patients and other personnel. Some of the US health agencies are focused on the prevention of infections and controlling them. These include the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). These comprise of different institutes and centers for disease control and preventions. Then there are Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). For the safety of the labor agency, that is responsible for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).

There are a lot more agencies and regulatory bodies responsible for the quality services to the patients. Health care organizations need to comply with the requirements imposed by the government health care organizations to ensure the safe environment for the patients and other members of the organizations. The agencies play their role in risk management by providing proactive intervention strategies aimed at saving the health care facilities from any threats by providing them with the safety standards. Compliance with the government laws and these regulatory agencies ensure the beforehand preparation for the risks and can be regarded as the proactive approach to mitigating risks. Moreover, some of the agencies regulate the safety of equipment used in the health care , for instance, FDA regulates the effectiveness and safety of the X-ray equipment and other medical devices and approves new equipment before they are sent to the market.

The American Society for Health Care Risk Management (ASHRM) was established in 1980 and is a professional member of the group of AHA (American Hospital Association) representing the risk management, patient safety, law, patient safety, and finance. The organization is responsible for the promotion of effective risk management strategies and providing health care facilities with professional leadership by educating them. Their educational programs consist of various courses and events that help the health care facilities with the patient safety and reduced uncertainty and enhancing value by managing the risks.

The plan under consideration is focused on the privacy and confidentiality of the plan, and all the activities carried in order to implement and carry forward the plan. It ensures secrecy and privacy in matters of risk reporting, documents involved and in all the activities. However, it does not ensure the privacy of the patient and employees information. The plan puts emphasis on the patient and employee safety and considers it as the primary responsibility. It is directed at assuring patient safety by involving the safety committee to support the risk management. Safety of the environment is also the prime focus of the program. The scope of the plan is to link risk management with patient safety. To prevent injuries the development of safety programs in another element of the plan, which reveals that the plan is mainly focused on employee and patient safety.

There is always room for improvement to enhance the quality of service and ensure the safety of personnel and to comply with the rules and regulations. With respect to the changing needs and requirements from the regulatory bodies, increase in the research and the advancements in technology, the risk management plans, and programs can be made better to decrease the likelihood of threats CITATION Cag11 \l 1033 (Cagliano, 2011). The plan is very effective because it covers all the major areas that require attention regarding risk occurrence. However, to proactively manage the risk, enterprise risk management can be adapted which incorporates both the strategic and operational risk CITATION Ame09 \l 1033 (Management, 2009). Enterprise risk management encompasses different risk domains including operational, strategic, financial, clinical and patient safety, human capital, legal and regulatory, technological and environmental risks.

This integrated approach has been adopted by many healthcare organizations, which not only includes the typical elements of risk management and at the same time expand them with a big picture to manage and mitigate risk. Moreover, it offers more compliance with the standards of ASHRM. According to ASHRM, enterprise risk management is a comprehensive framework, which allows achieving maximum value from the risk and uncertainty management activities. Hence, it is recommended that due to the changing landscape of the healthcare industry, the health care facilities and organizations should be looking forward to implementing ERM and the current plan can also be integrated ERM.

References

BIBLIOGRAPHY Alam, A. Y. (2016). Steps in the Process of Risk Management in Healthcare. J Epid Prev Med 2(2), 118.

Cagliano, A. C. (2011). A systemic methodology for risk management in healthcare sector. Safety Science, 49(5), 695-708.

Florence Kavaler, R. S. (n.d.). Risk Management in Healthcare Institutions . Jones and Bartlett Learning .

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Management, A. S. (2009). Risk management handbook for health care organizations (Vol. 30). John Wiley & Sons.