Risk management in healthcare
Many consider the healthcare field to be one of the most rewarding lines of work, but many of the rewards involved are connected to corresponding risks. The sheer joy of watching patients improve and recover can be offset by one unnecessary fall, an avoidable medication error, or a claim or lawsuit filed by dissatisfied patients. This high risk, high reward work environment clearly illustrates the urgency of maintaining adequate risk management in healthcare organisations. With the right risk management system in place, negative aspects of the job can be avoided, prevented, and minimised while everything that makes it so worthwhile gets full opportunity to flourish.
Of course, risk management in health and social care also serves important technical and financial interests. Having the right risk management system in place can help shield your organisation against costly expenses and highly unpleasant insurance claims associated with preventable risk and incidents. Add to this the potential of avoiding detrimental physical and mental consequences of such risks for your patients, and the case becomes crystal clear: risk management is vital to keeping your work procedures, personnel, and clients as safe as possible while providing the best care possible.
In today’s complicated healthcare environment, working with cutting edge risk management software is the most efficient way of minimising potential hazards while maximising the potential of your organisation. That is why The Patient Safety Company has spent decades designing, implementing, and perfecting the best risk management software that any healthcare professional could wish for.
What is risk management in healthcare
Once you become aware of what is risk management, you will start to appreciate how it permeates all levels of care for all parties involved. In healthcare, every professional act and every new situation holds potential risks. As long as everyone involved is fully focused on these risks and knows how to manage them, incidents and near-incidents can be avoided without interrupting work procedures.
Moreover, awareness of what is risk management in healthcare helps raise awareness of new hazards as the field changes. If your staff and patients are encouraged to detect and report new potential threats to health and well-being, negative experiences can be prevented before they get the chance to occur.
Understanding precisely what is risk management in health and social care settings is a fundamental way of making - and keeping - the services you provide as safe and as robust as possible. Adequate, effective risk management is not just the ability to deal with detected risks: it also means utilising the full potential of your people to make sure future incidents are avoided. If you wish to use this potential without expanding the workload of your already burdened staff, finding the best risk management software becomes an urgent matter of common sense.
Flexibility and ease of use
Risk awareness starts with reporting near accidents, incidents, complaints or other undesirable situations. As employees do not always feel the sense of urgency (or take the time) to properly record, for example, an incident, user-friendliness is extremely important. We have therefore developed mobile-first forms that can be completed anywhere, any time and on any device.
Benefits of our web forms:
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Fully customizable online forms;
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Include 25 question types to record the required information;
Incident Management eBook
Read our free eBook for more information about setting up incident management.
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How do you ensure your organisation learns from incidents?
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How to modernise to digital incident management?
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Including tips for analysing incidents.
Why is risk management important in healthcare
As we already stated above, the healthcare field is fraught with reward as well as with potential danger. Being entrusted with the health and well-being of patients is a privilege, but is a heavy responsibility at the same time. This is the key to understanding why risk management is so important in healthcare. The risks your people and clients encounter on a daily basis deserve to be kept to a bare minimum, even before we consider the threats they pose to your operational continuity.
The good news is, however, that you have all the means at your disposal to make quality management work for your organisation and patients alike. All you need to do is tap into the full potential of the people your work with, by inviting and encouraging them to help keep your healthcare efforts as healthy and risk-free as possible.
A selection of our blogs
Just Culture: addressing errors in medical care
The SIRE Method: A Specialised Version of Root Cause Analysis
The PRISMA Incident Analysis Method: Improving Patient Safety
How staffing shortages affect patient safety
The process of risk management software in healthcare
We have developed intelligent software solutions that let you make full use of the knowledge, sensitivity, and hands-on experience of your personnel for a high-quality risk management process. Shared online apps, transparent reporting procedures, and practical, intuitive solutions to tackle any risks detected ensure your full workforce is willing and able to contribute. That makes them your eyes and ears on the ground, allowing you to make clever use of their unique perspective on the real potential hazards that managers and board member tend to overlook.
The process of risk management in healthcare is a shared process by definition. Our risk management software facilitates the pooling of your staff resources and our digital tools, resulting in a robust, practice-based system that detects and eliminates risks before they get a chance to escalate.
Digital Quality Management System
In the unique British healthcare landscape, principles of risk management are heavily determined by the code of corporate governance UK organisations must comply with. The Patient Safety Company has extensive experience in implementing not only risk management systems, but also quality management, incident reporting and management, and patient safety solutions across a wide range of healthcare organisations.
We are uniquely equipped to help your find the software, training, and operational rollout that best suits your needs. Our familiarity with the principles of risk management in healthcare help you steer clear of unnecessary expenses and obsolete procedures, making for fast and efficient implementation of a system that works for you. We look forward to consulting you on the best risk management solutions that make your life and the lives of your patients that much safer in the process!
Is your organization about to make the transition from paper to digital work? Or does the organization have a digital quality management system they want to replace? In both cases the best advice is to make a business case. Download our eBook for help with your business case.
Schedule a free online demo or discuss your needs with a specialist.
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Learn things like creating an incident reporting form
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See how easily you can analyse incidents and quality-related data
