Risk Management Tools

Risk Management Tools

The risk management process involves identifying, analyzing, and mitigating certain uncertainties during the process of decision making. Risk management process encompasses five critical stages that include; identification of risk, risk analysis, evaluation of the risk, risk treatment, and risk monitoring activities. Risk management process in health care facilities employs the use of several tools that help in improving communication, promoting patient safety, and initiating quality assurance plans. Some of the tools applied in the risk management processes in the health care industry include; SBAR, PDCA, Lean, DMAIC, and ISO 9001. Health care industries should use these tools effectively during the risk management process to mitigate some of the serious risks that may arise. For instance, the risk of having some of the patient concepts missing during reporting is avoided by the use of the SBAR model. The use of SBAR, PDCA, Lean, DMAIC and ISO 9001 tools in risk management processes is important in health care industries since, they improve communication, ensure patient safety and assist in formulating quality assurance plans.

Risk management process in the health care industry applies the use of SBAR (Situation, background, assessment, and recommendation) model. This is a powerful tool that helps in improving effective communication between health care professionals (Andreoli et al., 2010). It facilitates patient safety by providing the content as well as the structure of verbal communication about the patients. This ensures that some of the key concepts regarding the patients are not missed during reporting. The risks of patient injuries in health centers are as a result of ineffective and unclear communications between the health care specialists. According to Andreoli et al. (2010) health care Professionals will lack the ability to make the right assessments and sound decisions due to a lack of shared understanding This model saves time by ensuring that the information structure is enhanced.

Health facilities use the Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) tool as part of its managing structure to organize their operations. It is considered as a tool for planning of significant projects within the hospital. The planning stage involves the process of evaluating the current procedure. The do stage consists in putting these plans into actions. This tool promotes effective planning, which in turn reduces the chances of errors. As per Whittingham & Oldroyd (2014), adopting the use of this tool helps in removing accidents in the healthcare processes, which improves the safety of the patients. This tool also ensures ease in managing the general operations within the hospital, which promotes quality services to the patients. PDCA ensures that the stock is always available in the health care facility, thus avoiding shock (Whittingham & Oldroyd, 2014). The use of PDCA tool helps in minimizing wastes to a more significant amount through the inculcation of lean in the process which maintains the durability of useful products such as needles. This ensures the safety of the patients as well as quality services to victims.

The use of ISO 9001 tool in the risk management process ensures quality standards to patients. This tool promotes safety and improves quality to the patients through a clear quality managing framework (Whittingham & Oldroyd, 2014). This is the most effective method to provide focused care to patients. The use of DMAIC tool which stands for define, measure, analyze, improve and control, enhances quality in the health care facilities. As per Novac & Fairchild (2012), this model improves patient satisfaction in health centers, which improves the safety of the patients. The use of DMAIC technologies ensures ease in management of the health care institutions, which enhances the quality standards in the health care facility.

Lean is a tool that is used for quality improvement in health care facilities. That improves the quality of the process (Whittingham & Oldroyd, 2014). Lean improves mental health care to the patients. In health care facilities, lean ensures that there is quality at the source. It ensures that procedures are established to deliver quality output that will meet the expectations of the patients. This improves the safety of the patients.

Conclusion

SBAR model is an effective way of improving communication between the health care professionals within a health care facility. Effective communication between the professionals in the health care facility reduces the risk of misunderstanding, which finally enhances the safety of the patients. Effective implementation of this model improves mutual respect among health care professionals. Proper planning in the health care facilities by the use of PDCA model reduces the chances of errors, which promotes quality services to the patients. The use of ISO 9001 tool promotes safety and improves quality to the patients through a clear quality managing framework