Corporate Compliance Plan
A corporate compliance plan is one of the most important documents that guide the organization to achieve the mission, vision, and value statements. The plan uses organizational strategic management practices to provide policies, procedures, and protocols that can help address events and issues in the company. In healthcare facilities, compliance, and risk management plan help identify, assess, and reduce the potential to patients, visitors, staff, and the assets in the institution. In most cases, a risk management plan is used in a pro-active manner in the identification and management of risks, but if the incident happens, one can manage it as per risk management principles. It is essential to understand the steps for developing a compliance and risk management plan for a community hospital by discussing the steps that lead to creating a plan to enhance quality and safe care.
When creating the plan for a community health facility, there are some of the things that the hospital should comply with, for instance, recognizing that the effectiveness of risk management depends on the collaboration with performance improvement activities to ensure proper identification and resolution of risk and quality issues in the institution. It is also crucial for the hospital to provide and facilitate regular risk management programs to all staff and new employees to equip the employees to minimize risk and improve the healthcare facility (Mello & Livingston, 2016). The hospital should also provide proper management of the patient and family grievances by carrying out an excellent resolution to the complaints. The community health facility must measure patient satisfaction and respond to the issues raised to ensure quality and safe healthcare to the patients.
When creating a risk management plan, the first step is to establish the context of care services in the facility because this is essential in risk identification and management. Community health facilities provide different services to the patients. It is vital to identify a specific sector when developing a risk management plan, for instance, rehabilitation, treatments, diagnostics, and end of life care services. Each sector is critical, and it requires a specific response to its issues. Because of that, risk management developers should consider focusing on one field at a time to ensure the achievement of a practical plan. After establishing context, the next step is to identify the risk in the healthcare service provision.
Risk identification is the second step, where healthcare professionals and providers become aware of the potential risks in the healthcare environment. Identifying the risk is one of the essential stages necessary for a lasting solution to a problem or issue in the hospital (Moore, White, & Washington, 2017). The hospital has different ways of identifying risks when providing healthcare services, for instance, tracing the patient’s journey from the admission till discharge point, analyzing facility management and safety committee reports, and patient complaint and satisfaction results. Conducting discussions between department chiefs, managers, and staff is another crucial source of information that can help identify risk in the healthcare provision system. After identifying the risk, the next step is analyzing them to better understand and propose appropriate measures and solutions.
Analyzing the risks is the third step in developing a risk management plan, and it involves trying to understand the level of risks, underlying causes, and the existing control measures. It is possible to achieve the risk level by carrying out risk scores, which involve multiplying the likelihood score with the severity score. The likelihood of scoring depends on the knowledge, expertise, and experience of the people providing the scores. When assessing the likelihood, it is critical to consider the nature of the risk, the probability of it occurring in the future, and how it is likely to happen to ensure the development of effective measures to address the issue. Severity is the harm that the risk is expected to cause to the employees, patients, hospital environment, and the healthcare providers.
The root cause analysis is a systematic process of identifying the underlying causes of a risk to enable one to take adequate steps to modify the trend and prevent future incidences. The risk management team and relevant stakeholders in the community hospital will use a method such as brainstorming to carry out the root cause analysis of the risks (Pereira & Cister, 2016). When examining the existing control measures, the community health facility should focus on the adequacy, the implementation method, and the effectiveness of the approaches in minimizing the risks to the lowest level possible. Some of the measures that health facilities usually use to mitigate the risks include the policies, emergency arrangements, training, procedures, and protocol guidelines.
The fourth step in the risk management plan is the evaluation of risk, and this involves prioritizing risks basing it on the analysis scores to decide which one requires immediate response and using which method. When evaluating the risk, the community hospital will accept the risk or provide treatment to the risk. When deciding to accept the risk, it is essential to consider some reasons, such as the availability of measures to address the risk and the level of the risk, and the resources required to handle it. The process of evaluating the risk is crucial because it enables the hospital to address the risk that is more sensitive to the available resources in the process of mitigating its impact. Managing the risk is the last step in the preparation of a risk management plan.
The final stage in developing the plan is reducing or mitigating the risks by proposing actions, identifying the resources and responsible people, and setting the time frame for addressing the issue. It is in this plan aims at reducing the likelihood of occurring and the severity of the risk. The program seeks to minimize the possibility of a risk arising by ensuring that the risk management team carries out supervisions, provides necessary staff training, preventative maintenance, and programs that ensure quality service provision (Singh & Ghatala, 2012). The plan can also ensure the reduction of severity through conducting emergency procedures and training the staff. Avoiding the risk is also an essential procedure in risk management because it prevents the community hospital from carrying out activities that contain unacceptable risks. The hospital can prevent trouble by choosing an alternative method with fewer risks.
Since the community hospital provides diagnostics, treatment, and end-of-life care services to most of the population, it is essential to address risk in these sectors to ensure quality service provision to patients. The plan will play a significant role in providing quality healthcare service delivery to the patients. It allows the hospital risk management team to have a systematic approach to addressing risk. The plan also ensures that each sector addresses its quality service issues in the public community hospital.
A risk management plan in a public community hospital is essential because it minimizes the risks and ensures quality healthcare provision to the patients. Development of a risk management plan consists of five stages: the establishment of risk context, identification of risk, risk analysis, risk evaluation, and treatment/management of risk. The plan plays a crucial role in enhancing the quality of service provision in the healthcare facility to most people who seek diagnostics, treatment, and end of care services.