Risk management in the healthcare industry may in fact be more important compared to other industries. Usually, an organization develops and implements strategies for risk management to prevent and limit financial losses. While the same can be said for healthcare, it’s more focused on the safety of its patients rather than financial safety. Risk management in healthcare may be the difference between life and death for some patients.
Risk Managers
The process behind risk management in the healthcare industry is important in terms of sustainable success. While having an outline for risk management is a good start, it’s important that all employees are well-trained and know how to put the steps of a risk management system in place in order to mitigate risks and report any issues to the risk manager.
A risk manager is usually someone who has the experience needed in handling risk-related issues in various settings. They should be able to identify and evaluate risks quickly and fully, which will help to reduce the potential for injury to patients, staff, and visitors. A risk manager should also be able to analyze current healthcare risk management strategies.
If there in fact certain strategies that are being used for medical conditions and it’s found that these strategies can end up leading to harmful side effects, they should be updated or taken out altogether.
Prioritization of Risk Management
It’s important that a healthcare organization establishes what could happen and how likely it is that it will happen. What’s more, they should be evaluated for the severity of these potential risks and what the fallout is. From there, it should be determined how that healthcare organization can limit risks and cut down on their overall impact and what the potential exposure of those risks would be if they happen to go on uncontained.
Risk Management for Finances
For risk management in terms of finances, the goal should be to avoid as many losses as possible in terms of how they could affect the bottom line. First, healthcare organizations should research any trends in the industry so it can analyze current risk management strategies to determine if its ahead of behind. If it’s behind, adjustments should be made in order to save major capital.
Some other common goals for financial risk management in healthcare include cutting down on malpractice claims, reducing the number of incidents, and improving on communication among staff.
It’s a Process
It’s important to not get overwhelmed. This can be achieved by taking on a more simplified approach. All employees should be educated in all aspects of healthcare risk management, including how to prevent and respond to risks.
Next, employees should keep accurate and complete documentation. This helps to look back and use as a reference when certain issues come up later on. Employees should also learn how to handle complaints to mitigate risks to a healthcare organization and know how to report an incident to reduce risks.
Healthcare risk is layered and goes beyond the notes above, but this should be a good foundation. If a healthcare organization doesn’t have a healthcare risk management team in place, it should begin to think about creating one or looking for outside help.
