gain real-world insight into how risk management programs operate within health care organizations.
Select a local health care organization where you can conduct an interview with an employee who is involved in risk management processes. This organization can be your current employer or a different health care facility in your community. Acute care, urgent care, large multi‐provider private medical clinics, assisted living facilities, and community/public health clinical facilities are all ideal options to complete the requirements of this assignment. Select an individual who can provide sufficient information regarding how their organization manages risk within its facility to answer the questions below.
In your interview, address the following:
• Risk management strategies used in the organization's risk control program, along with specific examples.
• How the facility's educational risk management program addresses key professional, legal, and ethical issues, such as prevention of negligence, malpractice litigation, and vicarious liability.
• Policies the facility has implemented that address how to manage emergency triage in high‐risk areas of health care service delivery (e.g., narcotics inventories, declared pregnancy policies, blood-borne disease vector, etc.), and identify how these align with Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) standards.
• Challenges the organization faces in managing and controlling high-risk health care (e.g., infectious diseases, nuclear medicine, abortion, class 4 narcotics/opioids, etc.), and include how cultural and religious beliefs affect the provision of patient care.
• Strategies the facility utilizes to monitor, evaluate, and maintain compliance within its risk management program.
After conducting the interview, compose a 750‐1,000-word summary analysis of the interview that includes the prompts above, in conjunction with the interviewee's responses. In addition, include the following elements in your response:
• An assessment of the organization's risk management program, including how it attends to high-risk health care and legal concerns.
• Action steps you would take to improve one area of the organization's risk management program, along with your rationale for doing so.
Risk Avoidance: This is achieved by ceasing or refusing to participate in activities deemed too high-risk. For example, [Hospital Name] does not offer elective abortions due to high legal and political risk, opting instead to refer patients to specialized external clinics.
Risk Reduction (Loss Prevention): This is the most active area. Specific examples include:
Universal Protocol Checklists: Mandatory time-outs before all surgical procedures to prevent wrong-site, wrong-procedure, and wrong-patient errors .
Fall Prevention Initiatives: Implementing the Morse Fall Scale upon admission and utilizing bed alarms, yellow gowns, and patient education to reduce patient falls.
Risk Transfer: The facility transfers financial risk primarily through robust malpractice and liability insurance policies. They also require outside contractors (e.g., outsourced cleaning or physical therapy) to provide certificates of insurance, transferring liability for those services.
Risk Retention: The organization maintains a self-insured retention (deductible) on its malpractice policy, which encourages internal focus on minor incidents and claims that fall below the threshold.
Educational Risk Management and Legal/Ethical Issues
The facility’s educational risk management program is mandatory for all clinical and non-clinical staff and is primarily delivered through online modules and annual competency training. It specifically targets key professional, legal, and ethical issues:
Prevention of Negligence/Malpractice: Training focuses on documentation best practices. Staff are consistently taught that "if it wasn't documented, it wasn't done." Specific training modules address charting timeliness, clear communication of critical values, and legible documentation.
Vicarious Liability: Education stresses that the facility is responsible for the acts of its employees performed within the scope of their employment. This is addressed by training staff to always follow official policy and procedure (P&P). Any deviation from P&P, even under informal peer pressure, is highlighted as a high-risk activity that could expose the individual and the organization to liability.
Ethical Issues: Annual training includes mandatory modules on patient rights, informed consent, and mandated reporting (e.g., child or elder abuse). Ethical consultations are streamlined, with a 24/7 hotline and clear policies for involving the hospital ethics committee in end-of-life decisions or conflicts regarding autonomy.
Sample Answer
Risk Management Program Summary and Analysis: [Hospital Name]
This summary analysis is based on an interview conducted with [Interviewee Name, Title], the [Role, e.g., Risk Manager, Quality Improvement Coordinator] at [Local Healthcare Organization Name], a [Type of facility, e.g., 300-bed acute care hospital] in [Community/City]. The goal was to gain real-world insight into the organization's approach to risk management, focusing on high-risk areas and compliance.
Risk Management Strategies and Control Program
The organization utilizes a comprehensive approach to risk control, focusing primarily on prevention and loss reduction. The key strate