How to Develop a Healthcare Risk-Management Program

While you may dedicate your healthcare career to saving lives, human error makes mistakes in any healthcare setting almost inevitable. A healthcare risk-management program provides a legal resource to aid you as a healthcare professional in minimizing liability in situations that may result in legal action. If you can't afford to hire legal counsel to develop a plan, it's possible to create your own healthcare risk-management program with just a bit of time and research.

Things You'll Need

• List of procedures, behaviors and situations that may potentially cause harm to patients or employees
• List of estimated statistical likelihood of each occurrence
• List of severity of each occurrence
• Prioritized list based on severity and likelihood

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Instructions

• 1

  Reduce your practice's potential overall risk level by working with staff to take measures to decrease the frequency of any occurrences that may be preventable. Consider steps that can be taken to limit the severity of the issues that occur. For example, if you have a general physician practice, you may seek to refer those patients who present with very severe conditions to specialists for treatment.

• 2

  Consider alternative methods, procedures and practices that would allow you to eliminate any situations that may result in bodily harm. Also consider eliminating any practices and procedures that are of particularly high risk. For example, if you have a physician practice that utilizes any new, potentially controversial procedures or technologies, you may seek to eliminate these until they've been more extensively tested.

• 3

  Consider transferring particular risks to an insurance company, which will then be responsible for any financial liability that ensues from these situations. It should be noted, however, that legal liability will remain with the practice itself. One type of practice that may fit within this category would be one that involves any type of invasive surgery. If you perform surgeries that can have potentially serious complications, for example, you should consider some degree of financial liability insurance.

• 4

  All necessary procedures and actions that carry minimal or unavoidable risk should be listed under the heading of "Risk Retention." Routine, daily activities, such as physical examinations, required immunization shots, or nonacute illness prescriptions, would likely fall under this category.

• 5

  Carefully evaluate all situations and behaviors and categorize them within one of the above four categories: reduction of risk, elimination of practice, transfer of financial liability, or risk retention. After modifying and eliminating all necessary procedures, purchase the necessary insurance and select procedures and policies to fit each category. Continue to reevaluate and update your plan annually or after any major staff or procedural changes.