In healthcare, proactive risk management refers to the administrative and clinical measures that have been employed to help assess, detect, monitor, and prevent risks. By doing these, healthcare organizations hope to safeguard not only the safety of patients but also their brand, assets, community standing, and market share. Whenever a medical mistake occurs and a tragedy results, the health community is always prosecuted by the public and the media and this leads to erosion of the system’s trust. The public’s expectation is that a healthcare system should be flawless. To prevent such occurrences, several techniques have been employed by The Joint Commission (TJC). Healthcare Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (HFMEA) is one such technique (Giardina, Cantone, Tomarchio & Veronese, 2016) .
HFMEA is a technique that healthcare specialists use to identify failures that may potentially occur before a service is provided. Experts also use this technique to improve the services that they currently provide to patients. The objective of HFMEA is to improve service delivery to patients by ensuring that they are safe.
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HFMEA is applied in the following instances:
When a new process is being implemented.
When a current process has resulted in failures and hence needs modifications.
When a current process is being implemented in a new location.
The technique is sometimes referred to as Healthcare FMEA. The prospective assessment helps to identify and improve the steps that experts use in a process to ensure that chances of achieving the desired outcome are increased. The approach is systematic and consists of five steps as outlined below:
Topic definition.
Assembly of a cross-functional team.
Description of the process.
Application of the three path model.
Closure of the issue.
Reference
Giardina, M., Cantone, M., Tomarchio, E., & Veronese, I. (2016). A Review of Healthcare Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (HFMEA) in Radiotherapy. Health Physics , 111 (4), 317-326. doi: 10.1097/hp.0000000000000536’
