Assesing Risk

Despite many excellent, well developed plans, organizations face the reality and risk of service failure. Whether its human error or system error, incidents occur and healthcare facilities need to be prepared to cope with them. (Fottler, Ford & Heaton, 2002).

One way to constitute "quality" and assessing and reducing risk is to identify potential problems, before they happen. Implement preventive strategies, which seek out to identify and repair any potential trouble spots before they become problems for patients, as well as identifying and fixing service problems after they have occurred so that they can be fixed and prevented in the future.

Problems are always going to occur, therefore using risk assessment strategies need to be used regularly. When problems arise, employees should be trained on how to react quickly and appropriately in order to correct the problem and recover from it. It is important that systems be utilized that gather information on incidents and dissatisfactions, and the reasons behind them. Gathering this information will permit the organization to identify and correct causes of the service issues which may be preventing patients or customers from having a good experience.

Patients evaluate service that they receive every time that they receive it and form opinions about its quality and value, therefore it is crucial to assess complaints and evaluate them in order to see things through the patient's eyes to create excellence in service. (Fottler, Ford & Heaton, 2002).Assessing and reducing risk are important in order to identify key problems and fix them as they arise so that issues can be addressed.

Reference:

Fottler, M., Ford, R, & Heaton, C. (2002). "Achieving Service Excellence : Strategies for Healthcare". Foundation of the American College of Healthcare Executives, U.S.