Countries around the world are struggling to address the growing rate of healthcare negligence claims. Lack of clarity about priorities is resulting in stress, inefficiency and the potential for poor quality care, creating greater exposure to many types of risk, including:
- Negligent credentialing claims for failure to implement appropriate clinician selection and retention programmes
- Diminished safety and quality ratings
- Administrative errors around documentation and confidentiality
Governments have passed regulation in a bid to improve patient safety and reduce clinical negligence, but for medical treatment facilities to really succeed, they must start by taking a good look at their governing framework and overall structure to ensure risk management is embedded and that the ‘business’ side is aligned with the ‘clinical’ side.
The following tips can help the boards of healthcare organisations improve accountability, efficiency and thus forge stronger alliances between governing board members and the clinicians working on the front line.
- Refine Core Competencies: Board members must demonstrate skills in mediation, intellectual honesty and integrity, strong ethical values, and a “systems thinking approach” to problem solving to avoid a blame culture.
- Establish Oversight for Risk and Quality Control: Board members must partner with key risk management and clinical staff to collaborate on improving processes and safeguards. Set up a Risk Committee to monitor, quantify, and evaluate the organisation’s risks and establish mitigation procedures, and an Audit Committee to monitor and report on financial and operational performance and ensure that reports on key topics – such as revenue, clinical performance, changes in service area, patient satisfaction, recruitment and retention – are evaluated and acted upon.
- Strengthen Alliances with Executive Leadership: Appoint senior administrators and/or establish clearer reporting lines to strengthen communication and accountability regarding risk exposures and mitigating strategies (for example, the Chief Risk Officer reporting to the Risk and Audit Committees on the organisation-wide risk picture).
- Enhance Risk Communication: Organise the Board agenda on a select number of goals and eliminate items of marginal importance. Adopt ‘dashboard’ reporting formats, utilising charts and graphs to depict change over time and improve clarity of information. Finally, integrate risk topics into the board reports, including key risk management initiatives and actions required to ensure priorities remain focused, achievable, and actionable.
Following these guidelines can help Boards and Executive leadership communicate with greater impact across the organisation while promoting a transparent, collaborative approach to patient safety and risk issues and thus minimise exposure to litigation.
I’m Kevin McIntosh, Head of Medical Liability at CNA Hardy. Follow our blog series on LinkedIn.
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