Every healthcare system must implement risk mitigation tools. These tools are essential because they ensure patient safety and reduce errors that can jeopardize the effectiveness of organizations and lead to financial losses. The present paper describes three healthcare system mitigation tools and highlights their benefits and drawbacks. The tools include the proactive performance of risk assessment, hardwiring risk-mitigation practices, and task prioritization.
Proactive Performance of Risk Assessment
Risk managers must perform a risk assessment to identify risks before a problem occurs rather than wait to handle the risk event (Yarmohammadian, Abadi, Tofighi, & Esfahani, 2014). They can do this by engaging in the failure mode of effects analysis to identify the probability score of potential failures. The risk score will enable the manager to develop practices to reduce or eliminate potential risks in advance (Yarmohammadian et al., 2014). One shortcoming of this tool is that it takes time, and at times an event occurs where risk was unidentified.
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Hardwiring Risk-Mitigation Practices
Risk managers should standardize proper practices within the organization to reduce the risk environment. Managers can, for instance, hard wire such methods into the workflow of the organization through education and by introducing redundancies that ensure the completion of identified steps (Power, 2016). The practices can entail alerts, and updating electronic health records to remind staff about appropriate practices that ensure consistency. Hardwiring risk mitigation practices is vital since risk managers can evaluate commitment to standard practices through observation, reviews, and communication based on the established policies (Power, 2016). The drawback of this tool is that it brings additional workload to the healthcare workers.
Task Prioritization
Risk managers play a significant role in healthcare organizations, given the increased federal oversight in hospital processes and outcomes. Managers need to engage in task prioritization that requires the assessment of the risk involved if one task is completed over another (Weston, 2013). All healthcare workers must adhere to regulations and report possible issues they experience when accomplishing their tasks. It is significant to complete crucial tasks on time and deal with the less important ones later. A disadvantage of this tool is the challenge of getting every task accomplished where task prioritization is essential.
References
Power, M. (Ed.). (2016). Riskwork: Essays on the organizational life of risk management . Oxford University Press.
Weston, M., & Roberts, D. (2013). The influence of quality improvement efforts on patient outcomes and nursing work: A perspective from chief nursing officers at three large health systems. The Online Journal of Issues in Nursing , 18 (3).
Yarmohammadian, M. H., Abadi, T. N. B., Tofighi, S., & Esfahani, S. S. (2014). Performance improvement through proactive risk assessment: Using failure modes and effects analysis. Journal of education and health promotion , 3 .
