Risky Business
Risk management is a term heard widely in
health care today. When I ask housekeeping managers how they manage Risk
Management issues within the housekeeping department, I often hear that it is
an issue dealt with by different departments in the organization.
The fact is that, just like Occupational
Health and Safety, Risk Management must be a daily concern of every
housekeeping manager. Most organizations have policies in place dealing with
risk and many have implemented Risk Management Committees.
A Risk Management Committee is generally in
place to ensure the provision of quality service and care in a safe environment
for clients, staff and visitors while preventing or minimizing risk exposure.
This approach provides a multi-disciplinary review of the different risk issues
across the complex operations found in health care organizations.
Some have gone as far as hiring paid
personnel who specifically deal with Risk. However, many organizations are not
dealing with the entire picture. They see risk as a health and safety type
issues.
Some simply capture indicators of adverse
occurrences and attempt to trend and then fix. Many others have developed
systems with proactive strategies. Risk goes far beyond potential injury or
adverse occurrence to a patient.
You must look at other potential risk
factors such as risk to reputation, risk to financial loss. These issues can be
catastrophic for a healthcare organization or any business, and can sometimes
cause irreversible damage.
Housekeeping operations in a healthcare
organization are complex and expose the organization to Risk Management issues.
Two common examples include the handling and responsibility for Bio-medical
waste and waste involving confidential patient and client information.
What would the impact be to your
organization if a confidential patient record of a prominent person in your
community made it to the front page of the newspaper as a result of not being
destroyed properly? Or medical waste ending up in the local landfill and your
CEO is asked by the press how this could possibly happen. In order to minimize
risk exposure, the proactive housekeeping manager should consider the following
five steps:
- Identify loss exposure (Risk
Identification).
- Measure loss exposure, the likelihood
of occurrence and the severity to the organization.
- Develop a plan and the best
method of dealing with the exposure.
- Implement a plan and the chosen
methods to deal with the Risk issue.
- Monitor loss exposures and
evaluate the plan.
These five steps are meant as a beginning
point to help identify potential risk management issues and to assist in
developing strategies to deal with them. Increased regulations and voluntary
processes such as accreditation will continue to challenge organizations to have
detailed plans to address risk management issues. It is the role of the
housekeeping manager to enforce compliance with the risk management plan and
protect the reputation and financial assets of the organization.
