Risk Management in Healthcare
Lisa Carnley
[Institutional Affiliation(s)]
Author Note
Risk management programs in healthcare facilities and organizations are aimed at assessing the risks in the enterprise to unfold the insights and improve the overall health and performance of the organization. It is a fundamental part of any healthcare facility and provides them with the safety of their customers and employees. In addition, it saves the enterprise from a number of unforeseen events. A risk management program helps to identify and assess the threats to an organization CITATION Flo \l 1033 (Florence Kavaler). It is crucial for health care providers to develop and implement any risk management program that can help prevent any threats and enhances the quality of their service while keeping them safe.
Risk Management Program Briefing:
The risk management program implemented emphasizes patients, employees and other personnel’s safety in a healthcare association. The primary goal of risk plan management employed serves as a safety plan and ensures the organization environment is safe for all of the personnel. The plan is targeted at risk identification and elimination and fulfils organizational visions and mission. Along with human assets, the program also ensures establishing a culture of safety. It also provides the remedial solutions in case any unforeseen event happens, either they relate to the financial loss associated with claims. Furthermore, this plan has the clauses to ensure confidentiality of the data collected which is covered in the confidentiality statement and has an operational link with hospital staff.
The current risk management program highlights who is going to be involved in the process of plan implementation and acting upon it. The respective bodies responsible for different actions are identified and involved in this program. Moreover, it covers the aspects of treating and controlling the identified risks. The program is detailed enough to cover every aspect of risks identification, management, remedy and control. Maintaining the secrecy of everyone involved in the implementation of this program is also an important element. The plan is very detailed and ensures the concerned healthcare facility is saved from potential threats to the safety of their employees, patients, visitors and other staff members.
The program has proven to be effective in tracking, monitoring and evaluating potential liability exposure in the form of any patient or visitor complaint, any unforeseen event with an employee or any claim or lawsuit. The program establishes a risk management committee, which is responsible for providing oversight of activities and results of the risk management plan by monitoring the progress made towards the goals of the risk management program of the enterprise. That committee is held responsible for receiving and reviewing periodic reports regarding risk related data or patient’s claims for quality improvement. The risk reduction strategies used in the plan are linked with the organizational quality improvement plan and is made consistent with organizational mission and goals.
Role of Joint Commission in the evaluation of quality management
The Joint Commission is an independent non-profit organization, which accredits and certifies about 21000 health care facilities in the US. Its accreditation and certification is considered as a symbol of quality and shows an organization’s commitment towards performance standards. The joint commission is aimed at improving the quality of healthcare for the public, along with other stakeholders. It evaluates different healthcare organizations and inspires them to excel in providing quality services with due care so that all the people receive safe and best health care across all settings. Since 1951, the organization has developed and maintained state of the art quality standards which are focused on improvement of overall services of a health care organization. Studies reveal that the accreditation helps in the improvement of quality and quality management process of an organization.
The comprehensive process of the joint commission evaluates a health care facility on the basis of these standards and other requirements of accreditation and certification CITATION Sch11 \l 1033 (Schmaltz, 2011). Its accreditation services cover the majority of health care organizations and provides numerous benefits to them. These advantages involve risk management and reduction, enhances the community's confidence in their quality, education and expert advice and fulfillment of regulatory requirements of the state. The standards developed by the joint commission are focused on patient safety and high-quality service. Moreover, The standard-based survey is done to monitor the actual performance of accredited organizations and stimulating continuous improvement in their services. Through quality check (www.qualitycheck.org), it provides a comprehensive guide top accredited organizations, and their quality report is also included (2019). The quality report covers detailed information of an organization in terms of its performance and compliance with safety goals.
The joint commission accredited organizations are evaluated at regular intervals against the standards developed by the organization. Standards remain the basis of objective evaluation of a healthcare organization. These are used to evaluate the quality of services an organization is providing to its patients is a safe environment. In addition, they are focused on an organizational function essential to provide quality care. The surveyors of joint commission evaluate the health care facilities a minimum of once in 39 months to evaluate them on the basis of standard compliance. These surveys are unannounced, and an organization and are targeted at organizations quality management processes. The most important objective of a health care is to provide their employees with the safety and quality care. This is made possible with the help of joint commission standards which are directed at a quality assurance which significantly improves the healthcare service.
Roles of administrative personnel in risk management:
Since risk management is a crucial function of any organization, it demands some policies and procedures to be followed to have a risk management program. The organizational risk management policies consist of a set of steps that a company takes in order to keep their employees safe while they perform on job duties. These are the rules and regulations developed to keep the organization free of any threats and risks that can affect organizational performance. The human resource department of any organization is aimed at improving the efficiency of its staff and enhancing their work life.
The administrative personnel play a vital role in developing and maintain the risk management policies focused on employees of a health care facility. The risks or threats to an organization can be due to its people, its employee who may not show diligent care in performing their duties. Employee’s careless attitudes, absenteeism from work and even low number of employees than required can damage the quality of service. Risk management must be focused on the human resource of an organization in order to reduce the risks related to the personnel and use the right personnel to mitigate the risks if they appear.
People can be the cause of risk, and they are equally important in handling it as well. So people should be involved in risk management so that they can play their fundamental role in accomplishing the risks related goals. Human resources including all the labor and management personnel, all the part-time and full-time employees, play an important role in the organization. There is an evident relationship between risk and human resource. Human resource is responsible for job analysis, job descriptions, recruitment, selection and training of employees and their evaluation and compensation. Failure to perform any of these activities increase the chance of risks and hurts the operations of an organization, which fails to deliver quality to its customers.
In addition, risk management also requires integration of some skills such as leadership skills, communication skills and many others. Having employees with such skills provides support for the risk management activities and helps in sustaining the risk management policies. Employees are an integral part of maintaining any policies and procedures by an organization. The risk management policies need due care and participation of all the employees from all the management levels and human resource of an enterprise. For instance, if the risk management program fails to get any support from higher management, it cannot be functional to do the job. Hence, the importance of human resource and personnel in the sustenance of organizational policies cannot be ignored.
Relationship of risk management programs and compliance with ethical standards:
Ethics are the moral principles and guides the behavior of an individual and the activities in an organization. Different business practices involve ethics to ensure the good and superior quality of products and services to be provided to their clients. Ethics set a tone for good organizational practices. Ethics and risk management both are two different disciplines but they are strongly linked with each other CITATION Fra03 \l 1033 (Francis, 2003). Good risks management requires compliance with ethical standards and good ethics also need good risk management techniques.
Risk management deals with the decisions aimed at reducing the potential threat or loss to the organization. Ethics provides a system of guidelines for the appropriate actions and need to comply with certain rules and regulations. Both need each other as they share the common ground. Compliance with ethics saves organizations from the risks of harm to any of the stakeholder of the enterprise. Risk management is also centered on saving the organization and its people from any sort of harm. To reduce the potential risks in an organization, the employees have to act and behave ethically. In any case, if any member of the organization behaves unethically, it will cause certain damages to the organization and will pertain it to some threats.
If everyone in the organization has to behave ethically, then it demands to manage the risks and potential threats of an organization. The risk management team also has to act ethically in identifying, evaluating, reporting and mitigating risks. Permitting unethical behavior in an organizational setting is equal to putting it at high risk and threat. The careless actions from any of the organizational member can cause loss exposure in the form of loss of market share or reputation. In addition, if the risk management team manipulates any information for the sake of financial benefits, in the end, the organization suffers.
It is identified that the risk management in any organization places the ethical values at heart of the business. The reputed enterprises set the professional standards and values to promote integrity at all the levels of management. Compliance with the ethical standards set an organization in a line of defense and help it manage the regulatory, operational, market and other risks. Moreover, studies show that the link of compliance with ethical standards and risk management helps in identification of different issues and prevents frauds saving the reputation of an organization.
Ethics are fundamental to certain laws, and effective regulatory compliance requires ethical, cultural objectives. Different leading standards realize the importance of ethics and its integration with risk management. In addition, numerous organizations are linking their risk management with compliance to ethical standards in order to make both effective. Linking both together gives an ideal outcome for the organization in the form of an overall increase in quality and business reputation.
References
BIBLIOGRAPHY Florence Kavaler, R. S. (n.d.). Risk Management in Healthcare Institutions . Jones and Bartlett Learning .
Francis, R. &. (2003). Ethics as a risk management strategy: The Australian experience. Journal of Business Ethics, 45(4), 375-385.
Schmaltz, S. P. (2011). Hospital performance trends on national quality measures and the association with Joint Commission accreditation. Journal of hospital medicine, 6(8), 454-461.
(2019). Retrieved from http://www.nationalacademies.org/hmd/~/media/AEEDDA42300B40FD973EF25F516A41D3.ashx
