Interview with a Risk Manager



Interview with a Risk Manager

Introduction

Hospitals and nearly all health care centers are making the use of electronic health records (EHR) for minimizing medical errors for ensuring patients safety. Risk management system because of the introduction of EHR is facing some challenges as the risk managers need to develop expertise in health information technology. Organizations are investing millions of funds to install the EHR, so that they can take advantage of the funds allocated by Federal Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act.

The funds are allocated to encourage hospitals and health organizations, and physicians to adopt EHR. HITECH ensures certain criteria to achieve before approving funds. One of the risk managers has been interviewed to highlight the challenges posed by the adoption of EHR. He gave a detailed interview and commented that the new system is an opportunity but also a threat at the same time. Like every new technology, it has solved a number of problems, but created new ones that must be addressed before the new system goes into play (Charles et al, 2012).According to some of the risk managers converting to EHR system is a huge step towards technology. The system supports electronic entries, bar code scanners which can change 40 to 50% of clinical workflow. The risk managers are involved in all aspects of the project from deployment and planning to implementation and the review.

Involvement of Risk Managers Form the Beginning

The risk manager is the person who must be involved in all steps of the project of health information technology. The concerned authorities must realize this fact. Bringing him in at the end of the project can create a number of problems. The risk manger can identify health IT related issues that can affect patients safety. This is only possible when earlier risk management involvement is made sure. In one such incident, a risk manager reported 170 such mistake, ranging form wrong patient entries to the missed critical tests results as they were failed to be communicated from one system to another. It must also be noted there are certain events that engross more than one safety issue. Risk manager must be given a guide, such as toolkit during each stage that can identify management issues. These issues must be addressed to ensure patients safety. The toolkit can also be used for the identification of strengths and weaknesses in the approach adopted to deal with risk management (Jha et al, 2009).

The Pennsylvania Patient Safety Authority has recently reported IT mistakes and issues related to patients safety and submitted to the program of state reporting. The analysis of these more than 300 reports shows that in the period of eight years most of the errors have been located in the human data entry. The involvement of the risk managers at every stage also helps to avoid expensive missed opportunities to replace its IT system if it is not providing the yielding results and failed to meet the needs ...