NOTES

QUALITY ASSURANCE AND RISK MANAGEMENT

What is quality assurance in healthcare?

It is the process of ensuring that healthcare services meet or

exceed predetermined standards. It involves identifying
potential problems, developing and implementing solutions,
and monitoring the results to continuously improve patient
care. By implementing quality assurance measures, healthcare
providers can reduce medical errors, improve patient outcomes,
and increase patient satisfaction.

What is Risk management in healthcare?

It’s a system of processes, procedures, and reporting that helps

identify, monitor, and reduce risks to patients, staff, and the
organization.

Purpose

 Protect patients, staff, and the organization from harm

 Safeguard the organization's assets, market share, and
reputation

Risks cyber threats, physical threats, privacy breaches,

healthcare-associated infections, and non-compliance.

Techniques

 Risk assessment: Evaluate past risk events to develop a

plan to reduce future threats
 Risk mitigation: Use a plan to prevent harm and reduce
its effects
 Insurance and contracts: Transfer risk through
insurance and contracts
 PRINCIPLES OF RISK MANAGEMENT

Below, are some principles of risk management that are

outlined in the international standard.

1. Integrated - Ensure that all of your organization’s

activities make risk management a focus. Integrate it
throughout your organization.

2. Structured and comprehensive – To achieve consistent

results, your approach to risk management needs to be
well-organized and thorough. It can’t be haphazard or
sloppy; this only leads to failures down the line.

3. Customized – Every organization is different. Make sure

that your risk management framework and process is
tailored to your organization, the context in which it
operates, and its objectives.

4. Inclusive – Where appropriate, involve stakeholders in

the risk management process. Stakeholders are defined as
either a person or organization that can impact or be
impacted by your decisions or activities. By considering
their knowledge, views and perceptions, you can gain
valuable insight to improve awareness and inform risk
management.

5. Dynamic – The risk landscape is constantly changing, as

is your organization. Don’t get stuck in a rut. Your
organization should be able to anticipate, identify,
acknowledge and respond to all kinds of risks, whether
they are new, changing, or no longer a concern. You must
be able to do this quickly and appropriately.

6. Best available information – A robust risk management

process relies on past and present data, and anticipations
for the future, as well as the limitations and uncertainties
surrounding that information. What’s more, all information
must be timely and accessible for stakeholders who need
it.
 7. Human and cultural factors – Don’t forget about
human behavior and company culture, such as your
organization’s capabilities and goals, or stakeholder
objectives. Factors like these can significantly impact risk
management, so you must recognize this within your risk
management activities.

8. Continual improvement – In life, there is always more to

learn. The same is true for risk management. You should
always be discovering new things and, through
experience, your approach to risk management should
continually improve.

THE BENEFITS OF APPLYING THE PRINCIPLES OF RISK

MANAGEMENT

When principles of risk management are not followed, risk is

often approached in a disorganized manner that can have
spiraling consequences. For example, if a manufacturer does
not check the quality of materials from a supplier, they risk
creating a sub-standard product. This could then lead to recalls,
replacements, refunds, machine downtime, delay in re-supply,
and ongoing costs to reputation. The list goes on.

By applying the principles of risk management to your

organization, it becomes easier to handle risks like the one just
described. You can ensure that:

 Your approach to risk management is organized rather

than chaotic – this can prevent failures and the higher
costs associated with them, which protects the overall
value of your organization
 Your organizational risks are managed more easily –
poorly managed risks can often spread further than the
initial risk failure and make matters worse
 Your reputation is protected – a poor reputation can result
in less new business and a loss of existing customers,
which can be avoided when risk is managed more
effectively
  You can identify potential hazards – once identified, you
can take action to mitigate the damage should the risk
occur, or remove the risk completely
 You can identify possible opportunities – implementing
these opportunities can add value in your organization

Risk management steps

Follow these risk management steps to improve your process of

risk management.

1. Identify the risk

Anticipating possible pitfalls of a project doesn't have to feel

like gloom and doom for your organization–quite the opposite.
Identifying risks is a positive experience that your whole team
can take part in and learn from. Project risks are anything that
might impact the project’s schedule, budget, or success.

Leverage the collective knowledge and experience of your

entire team. Ask everyone to identify risks they've either
experienced before or may have additional insight about. This
process fosters communication and encourages cross-
functional learning.

2. Analyze the risk

Once your team identifies possible problems, it's time to dig a

little deeper. How likely are these risks to occur? And if they do
occur, what will the ramifications be? How will you respond?

During this step, your team will estimate the probability and
fallout of each risk to decide where to focus first. Then you will
determine a response plan for each risk. Factors such as
potential financial loss to the organization, time lost, and
severity of impact all play a part in accurately analyzing each
risk. By putting each risk under the microscope, you’ll also
uncover any common issues across a project and further refine
the risk management process for future projects.

3. Prioritize the risk

Now prioritization begins. Rank each risk by factoring in both its

likelihood of happening and its potential effect on the project.

This step gives you a holistic view of the project at hand and
pinpoints where the team's focus should lie. Most importantly,
it’ll help you identify workable solutions for each risk. This way,
the risk management workflow itself is not interrupted or
delayed in significant ways during the treatment stage.

4. Treat the risk

Once the worst risks come to light, dispatch your treatment

plan. While you can’t anticipate every risk, the previous steps
of your risk management process should have you set up for
success.

Starting with the highest priority risk first, task your team with
either solving or at least mitigating the risk so that it’s no
longer a threat to the project.

Effectively treating and mitigating the risk also means using

your team's resources efficiently without derailing the project in
the meantime. As time goes on and you build a larger database
of past projects and their risk logs, you can anticipate possible
risks for a more proactive rather than reactive approach for
more effective treatment.

5. Monitor the risk

Clear communication among your team and stakeholders is

essential when it comes to ongoing monitoring of potential
threats. Send regular project updates to the team and other
stakeholders. Check in with your risk managers individually to
ensure there aren’t any red flags popping up throughout the
project.

Be sure to actively maintain the risk register—it should be a

living document that you and your team refer to often. As risks
change or evolve, those should be updated in the log for
everyone to see. That way, everyone can stay on the same
page and respond to risks faster and more proactively.

While it may feel like you're herding cats sometimes, with your
risk management plan and its corresponding project risk
register in place, keeping tabs on those moving targets
becomes anything but risky business.