When an occurrence happens that puts your facility at risk, is not the time to begin to be concerned about risk management. The best protection for your facility considers three areas: 1) good management 2) up-to-date, reviewed personnel policies and 3) well-designed insurance coverage.
Good Management
All the efforts taken to manage a facility well contribute to sound risk management. Fully attentive administrative staff with a wide range of skills may be the most important guard against major risks.
Careful strategic planning and effective supervision helps ensure organizational resources is closely aligned to accomplishing the facility’s mission, and that staff and volunteers are treated fairly and comply with rules and regulations.
Management skills needed for nursing home supervision include:
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Supervision of Daily Operations
Nursing home managers oversee the policies and services of the entire facility. They must be able to manage health care staff, enforce policies that comply with regulations, and ensure the proper handling of medical records.
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Resident Care Skills
Nursing homes provide a variety of medical services for their residents, and in many nursing administrators are responsible for assisting in resident care. Administrators must be prepared to provide services as they direct health-care staff.
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Accounting Skills
Skilled nursing facilities operate on million dollar budgets. It is the nursing home administrator’s responsibility to direct the accounting staff, approve expenses and rates, and review financial reports and annual budgets. Additionally, administrators need to be familiar with medical billing and coding to ensure proper patient billing policies are in place.
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Human-Resources Management Skills
Nursing-home administrators are responsible for developing hiring and staffing policies for all employees – nurses, clerical staff, and maintenance workers. They direct the human resources department and supervise a large health-care staff. Therefore, administrators need human-resources management skills, including recruiting, staff training and development, and performance evaluation.
Personnel Policies
There has been a noticeable increase in lawsuits regarding wrongful termination, harassment and discrimination, disagreements about promotions or salary actions, etc. For good risk management, your facility must have up-to-date policies guiding relationships between staff and management. Review personnel policies at least once a year making sure, they adhere to all employee-related laws and regulations.
Management should be well versed about the policies, because typically courts will interpret actions by organizational personnel as representative of the organization’s preferred course of action, superseding related, documented policies.
Well-designed Insurance Coverage
It is important to have adequate insurance specifically designed to meet the needs of your facility. Prepare to meet with your insurance agent by studying your insurance policies. Note any questions and pose them to your insurance professional.
At Connected Risk Solutions, our experienced professionals are ready to help you by providing innovative insurance and risk management solutions designed to meet your management, and personnel needs. Please contact us today for additional information about the programs we offer at one of our two offices in Chicago at 847-832-9100 or Lansing at 517-676-7100.
