Risk Management
What is risk management in healthcare?
Risk management refers to a complex set of administrative and clinical systems, procedures, processes, and reporting structures that help detect, assess, monitor, mitigate, and prevent risk to patients, staff, and visitors.
Some elements that fall under risk management include:
- claims management
- insurance
- patient safety
- event/incident management
- compliance
- provider quality management
- third-party risk management
- enterprise risk management
When creating a risk management plan, healthcare managers identify potential risks through the following questions and analyses:
- What could happen?
- How likely is it for something to happen?
- If something happened, how severe would the outcome be?
- Can the likelihood of something happening be reduced, and to what degree?
- What can be done to reduce the impact, and to what degree?
Why is risk management important?
Risk management is crucial because it helps to prevent or minimize damages sustained by patients, healthcare staff, and visitors.
The risk management plan is individualized to each healthcare facility and the risks they can potentially face. By adequately training staff and physicians, providing counseling services for those working with patients, encouraging communication among staff members, and conducting competency assessments, risk can be minimized, creating a safer environment for all.