The healthcare industry continues to face a wide array of risks and challenges owing to the general volatility of the global economy, compounded by the after-effects of the pandemic and unstable geopolitical conditions. Risk assessment in healthcare has the potential to present strategies that can control these conditions.
The risk landscape for healthcare is vast, with cybersecurity threats and compliance issues taking centre stage. In fact, from April 2022 to March 2023, there has been an increase of 58.3% in ransomware attacks by themselves.
Furthermore, the healthcare industry has the highest average cost for a data breach—averaging $10.1 million, representing a 10% increase over the previous year.
Entities operating within the healthcare industry must take all necessary steps to manage this landscape of increasing risk and limited resources. This is where risk assessment in healthcare can play a huge role in achieving strategic goals.
Risk assessments provide a methodical approach for identifying, categorising, prioritising, and managing risks, to improve the likelihood of successfully avoiding, transferring, or mitigating risks.
This comprehensive guide to risk assessments aims to assist healthcare organisations in carrying out effective risk assessments that will help them prepare strategies for risk management.
About risk assessment in healthcare
The healthcare industry is a hotbed for risk exposure, rife with cybersecurity threats, the potential for compliance issues, patient safety considerations, financial uncertainties, and workforce challenges. Risk assessments are no longer an optional consideration in this context.
Conducting risk assessments not only helps healthcare providers understand the risks they are exposed to but also helps recognise and formulate the most appropriate mitigation strategies that will result in the lowest possible adverse impact.
Some of the popular methods for healthcare risk assessments include risk matrices, decision tree models, Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA), and bowtie models. Each of these methodologies has its own pros and cons and can be applied based on the circumstances and requirements.
Regardless of the methodology chosen, the overall process of conducting a risk assessment can be broken down into 5 main steps. This process is detailed below.
Conducting a healthcare risk assessment
An effective risk assessment in healthcare must take a structured approach to risk identification, assessment, mitigation, and continuous improvement. The following step-by-step guide details how this can be done.
1. Define the scope and objectives
It is critical that healthcare providers understand the scope and objectives of the risk assessment they are about to conduct before getting started on it. This initial step helps them understand the areas that will need to be focused on within the assessment and what the assessment process hopes to achieve.
Determining the scope and objectives of the assessment will inform the entire assessment process and result in higher risk resilience.
2. Identify the potential risks
Once the scope and objectives are defined, healthcare providers can identify the potential risks their organisation may be exposed to within the defined frame. These may include issues like non-compliance with regulations like HIPAA and GDPR, overlooking patient safety, and even natural disasters.
Understanding the extent of risk that they are facing will prepare healthcare providers to take on the task of formulating strategies to counteract them.
3. Assess the identified risks
With the risks they face identified and understood, healthcare providers can then begin the task of assessing them. This includes determining each risk’s likelihood of occurrence and severity of impact. This also includes identifying potential controls that could possibly be used to complement the mitigation measures that will be implemented.
Qualitative and quantitative identification of risks is imperative for prioritising them, allowing healthcare providers to allocate resources efficiently.
4. Develop mitigation strategies
At this stage, healthcare providers must take steps to formulate appropriate strategies to avoid, transfer, or mitigate the assessed risks. Naturally, risks that are identified to have a high probability of occurrence and more severe impacts must be mitigated first. Implementation of the mitigation strategy should reflect this fact for effective risk management.
Formulating effective mitigation strategies will allow healthcare providers to minimise or even completely avoid the negative impacts of risks on their operations.
5. Ensure continuous improvement
The process of risk management does not end here. The risk landscape today is highly volatile and evolves quickly, especially in the context of the healthcare industry. Implementing continuous evaluation and improvement measures is necessary to ensure business continuity and long-term success.
Maintaining effective continuous improvement initiatives allows healthcare providers to avoid unprecedented situations like the conditions that the pandemic brought forth in recent years.
Strengthen risk resilience and ensure continuity with a comprehensive healthcare risk assessment
Risk assessments are an integral part of improving the risk resilience of healthcare providers. Conducting an effective risk assessment in healthcare requires carefully defining the scope and objectives of the assessment, identifying and assessing the risks, formulating strategies for mitigation, and maintaining measures for continuous improvement.
As healthcare providers face a volatile risk landscape at present, this approach could prove to be extremely beneficial for both the long and short term.
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