Assignment: Introduction to Risk Management Implementation and Regulatory Environment
Assignment: Introduction to Risk Management Implementation and Regulatory Environment
Assignment: Introduction to Risk Management Implementation and Regulatory Environment
Introduction to Risk Management Implementation and Regulatory Environment Sample
Introduction to Risk Management Implementation and Regulatory Environment
The management of risks in healthcare organizations and settings is a primer for improved patient safety, quality care provision, and overall levels of satisfaction among providers and patients. Management of the inherent risks demonstrates an organization’s commitment to ethical and legal responsibilities and mandates. It also implies that an organization or setting is keen on attaining the biomedical ethical principles of beneficence, non-maleficence, autonomy, and justice. Emergency department registered nurses (RNs) have a critical duty of ensuring patient safety through an effective risk management plan in their workplaces (Shane, 2019). The purpose of this paper is to analyze the risk management plan of the emergency department in the organization. The risk management paper evaluates critical components comprising identification, assessment, and reduction of possible threats and risks to patients, visitors, personnel, and resources in the emergency department. The analysis demonstrates that risk management complies with regulatory standards and mandates in Minnesota.
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Summary of the Risk Management Plan
The type of risk management plan developed by the organization is community-focused and centered on patient safety because of the nature of the emergency department. The emergency department (ED) is not only dynamic and often unpredictable but also handles an increased number of patients based on their conditions. Speed, efficiency, and accuracy in assessing, diagnosing, and treating patients are essential because of the high flow of patients. As such, by recognizing the frequent types of risks taking place in the ED, providers can mitigate adverse events (AE) like medication errors and slow diagnosis processes that can jeopardize the lives of individuals. Again, the risk of offering emergency care to comply with the EMTALA provisions is always lurking in the ED. The rationale for selecting this type of risk management plan is to ensure that the facility can successfully implement measures to guarantee the safety not just of patients but also of their families, visitors, and even employees.
The core mission of our facility is to offer the citizens of Minnesota the best quality care irrespective of their socioeconomic status. The organization is part of a national health system that offers a wide range of medical and health services to patients and the communities it serves. These include primary care, rehabilitation and behavioral health services, and outpatient care (Department of Health, Minnesota, 2023b). Through an effective risk management approach, the facility can handle any potential medical error, equipment malfunction, and even the demise of patients while undergoing treatment. Imperatively, the organization should evaluate the increasing susceptibility to risks in the emergency department and develop an approach to mitigate their occurrence.
Standard Administrative Processes
Developing responsive measures to prevent risks before their occurrence is very important in healthcare organizations. Consequently, the organization, through the risk and disaster management department, develops measures to ensure that it can handle all anticipated risks before they result in substantial harm to the facility or its clients (Shane, 2019). The Minnesota Department of Health requires that facilities have risk assessments and plans that are facility-based and community-centered, take an all-hazards approach, and support continuous operations and improvements. Further, a facility’s risk assessment must tackle the resident population specific to its catchment. This implies that it should focus on persons at risk, the types of service it offers in an emergency, how it maintains continuous operation and delegation of authority as well as a succession plan.
Healthcare organizations depend on standards accepted or required by regulatory agencies. At the core of these requirements is the risk management process that entails the establishment of the context, identification of risks, analysis, evaluation, and eventual management (Tavirani et al., 2019). In establishing the context, the organization’s risk management department and personnel pay primarily focus on intensive care units, the emergency rooms and department, the operation room or theater, and blood transfusion services as well as the management of medications.
Effective communication among healthcare professionals and patients as developing reports and survey results is essential in risk identification. The analysis of risk levels and their associated causes is essential to prioritizing them and assessing the ones to manage based on the priority. The final stage entails defining the necessary and requisite resources, responsible personnel, actions, and timelines for handling them. In this case, most of the risks presented in emergency rooms (ER and ED) require speed, accuracy, and efficiency to reduce any possible adverse outcomes (Schultz et al., 2019). For instance, the organization has a systematic approach to patient documentation and treatment based on the defined processes that one should undergo aimed at minimizing and preventing unexpected failures and human errors, especially based on the technology at play. The risk management plan or framework in the organization’s emergency department adheres to all these steps.
Minnesota health legislation offers a more specific list of mandates in the development of a healthcare organization’s risk management plan for emergency departments and rooms. These entail provisions on public health preparedness and the facility’s level of preparedness to handle cases beyond their ordinary abilities. Healthcare organizations are mandated to educate all their stakeholders, including patients and other staff as well as families with individuals presenting in the ED (Shane, 2019). The legal statutes also obligate institutions to have only authorized personnel to attend to patients and report all adverse events to respective managers. The organization has a reporting of adverse events system that conforms to these requirements and legal mandates.
Key Regulatory Organizations and Agencies
The primary regulatory entity for safe healthcare in Minnesota is The Joint Commission. The organization is a national accreditation body that accredits healthcare organizations (The Joint Commission, 2023). The TJC accreditation implies that a hospital or medical center meets the recommended standards of care and patient safety and that healthcare professionals have the required competencies (Schultz et al., 2019). The second agency that oversees the risk management process is the Agency of Healthcare Research and Quality whose mission is the production of evidence to ensure that health care is safer, of high quality, more accessible and equitable, and affordable. As a federal agency, AHRQ works within the Department of Health and Human Services alongside other partners to ensure that facilities use the produced evidence to meet requisite quality measures by preventing risks. The third organization is the Minnesota Department of Health which implements legislation passed by the state legislature on risk management procedures (Department of Health, Minnesota, 2023). All healthcare facilities in Minnesota must follow the provisions implemented by the department.
Compliance with TJC Standards
The corresponding MIPPA-approved accrediting agency or body for the facility is Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). Based on its safety and quality standards, healthcare organizations must ensure that they prioritize patient safety. The agency develops quality guidelines for all departments in healthcare organizations to improve patient safety and reduce medication errors and other adverse events (AHRQ, 2023). Our facility complies with these provisions like effective reporting mechanisms and developing mitigation measures to reduce any risks in emergencies as well as complying with federal mandates like the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA) which mandates hospitals with emergency departments to offer medical screening examinations for any person coming to the ED and requests or requires such examination (Tavirani et al., 2019). The law prohibits facilities from refusing to offer such patients emergency care due to a lack of medical insurance coverage. However, the facility’s policy requires that individuals presenting in the ED should have health insurance to get a comprehensive examination.
Recommendations
The evaluation of risk management in the facility demonstrates that while it captures most aspects required by regulatory organizations and agencies, it is imperative to make changes that allow the policy to meet all provisions, particularly those on EMTALA. The implication is that the reporting system in the facility requires changes so that nurses and other healthcare professionals report such incidents whenever they occur. The policy should also ensure that it meets the emergency call button by The Joint Commission while it institutes an effective ED that can even handle mental health emergencies (Pin et al., 2020). The organization should expand its policy measures to include healthcare providers and implement a training manual for all stakeholders, particularly healthcare providers. It should develop sufficient signage for patients and their families on what to expect in the emergency department when presenting with any issue.
Conclusion
Risk management is a core part of patient safety and improved quality care delivery. Emergency department nurses are a critical part of any facility’s ability to manage patients presenting with pressing issues requiring treatment interventions. The risk management plan in the facility’s ED is sound but requires more measures to ensure that it attains better compliance and quality standards to reduce any risk to patients.
References
Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) (2023). Patient Safety and Quality
Improvement. https://www.ahrq.gov/patient-safety/index.html
Department of Health, Minnesota (2023). Emergency Preparedness & Response.
https://www.health.state.mn.us/communities/ep/index.html
Department of Health, Minnesota (2023b). Emergency Preparedness & Appendix Z.
https://www.health.state.mn.us/facilities/regulation/homecare/docs/providers/allpres220315.pdf
Schultz, M., Rasmussen, L. J. H., Carlson, N., Hasselbalch, R. B., Jensen, B. N., Usinger, L., …
& Iversen, K. K. (2019). Risk assessment models for potential use in the emergency department have lower predictive ability in older patients compared to the middle-aged for short-term mortality–a retrospective cohort study. BMC geriatrics, 19, 1-9. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/s12877-019-1154-7
Pin, R., Ralli, M. L. & Shanmugam, S. (2020). Emergency Department Clinical Risk. In
Textbook of Patient Safety and Clinical Risk Management. Springer, Cham. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-59403-9_15
Shane, R. (2019). Risk evaluation and mitigation strategies: Impact on patients, health care
providers, and health systems. American Journal of Health-System Pharmacy,
66(24_Supplement_7), S6-S12. DOI:10.2146/ajhp090461
Tavirani, M. R., & Beigvand, H. H. (2019). A Review of Various Methods of Management of
Risk in the Field of Emergency Medicine. Open Access Macedonian Journal of Medical Sciences, 7(23), 4179. DOI: 10.3889/oamjms.2019.616
The Joint Commission (2023). Hospital: 2023 National Patient Safety Goals.
https://www.jointcommission.org/standards/national-patient-safety-goals/hospital-national-patient-safety-goals/
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Assignment Direction:
The purpose of this assignment is to analyze a health care risk management program.
Conduct research on approaches to risk management processes, policies, and concerns in your current professional arena (emergency Department RN) to find an example of a risk management plan. Look for a plan with sufficient content to be able to complete this assignment successfully. In a 1,000â€1,250-word paper, provide an analysis of the risk management plan that includes the following:
Summary of the type of risk management plan you selected (new employee, specific audience, communityâ€focused, etc.) and your rationale for selecting that example. Describe the health care organization to which the plan applies and the role risk management plays in that setting.
Description of the standard administrative steps and processes in a typical health care organization’s risk management program compared to the administrative steps and processes you identify in your selected example plan. (Note: For standard risk management policies and procedures, look up the MIPPA-approved accrediting body that regulates the risk management standards in your chosen health care sector, and consider federal, state, and local statutes as well.)
Analysis of the key agencies and organizations that regulate the administration of safe health care in your area of concentration and an evaluation of the roles each one plays in the risk management oversight process.
Evaluation of your selected risk management plan’s compliance with the standards of its corresponding MIPPA-approved accrediting body relevant to privacy, health care worker safety, and patient safety.
Proposed recommendations or changes you would implement in your risk management program example to enhance, improve, or secure the aforementioned compliance standards.
In addition to your textbook, you are required to support your analysis with a minimum of three peerâ€reviewed references.
Prepare this assignment according to the guidelines found in the APA Style Guide, located in the Student Success Center. An abstract is not required.
This assignment uses a rubric. Please review the rubric prior to beginning the assignment to become familiar with the expectations for successful completion.
This benchmark assignment assesses the following programmatic competency:
BS Health Sciences
3.2 Discuss compliance with risk management protocol.
