Risk Assessment Report on Kaiser Permanente

Risk Assessment Report on Kaiser Permanente

Introduction

Risk can be explained as a concept that has possibilities of various technological effects or natural events manifesting it consequentially, leading to enhanced effects on human life. Risk is the likelihood of variation in the occurrence of an event which may have either positive, or negative, consequences. The traditional view of risk is negative, representing loss, hazard, harm and adverse consequences, however, some current risk guidelines and standards include the possibility of upside risk or opportunity. Opportunities are circumstances in which an uncertainty leads to a benefit or positive effect on the project. Despite recent considerations for upside risks, most risk analysis and management process still focus on managing hazards and threats, and the area of opportunities needs more work. While the concept, of risk might bring negative issues to most people's mind, it includes all kinds of risk like opportunities; the risk management process, considered as a Risk/Opportunity Management analysis, called ROM in current research. It is quite clear that an effective use of risk management processes and frameworks, strongly promoted by suitable choices of fundamental terms and concepts. The failure in employing the basic terms and concepts related to risk management processes creates problems for organizations and individuals.

Introduction - Kaiser Permanente

The example of the American insurer Kaiser Permanente, offer chances to observe consistent data collection for patients and its utmost utilization through efficient streamlined processes of the company. Kaiser Permanente is an insurance company with about 9 million policyholders, based in Oakland, California. Kaiser operates - in contrast to other American insurance - its own hospitals and outpatient medical center and currently employs approximately 180,000 medical and nursing staff. In areas with little insured Kaiser cooperates in some cases also with doctors networks. Generally, Kaiser Permanente (KP), but accepts only insured who live within a certain distance of an insurance physician.

Kaiser has been using consistently for several years, an electronic health record - partly, with access to the patient, which can for example retrieve his lab results online. Drive for the 4 billion dollar development was mainly high cost cases, the KP CEO George Halverson. Also facilitates the systematic digitization, standards of care to implement, for example, memory functions, automatic analyzes to benchmarking as well as software solutions for specific clinical pathways. About the software get the KP physician's access to some 2,500 internal standards, called "Care Protocols" - this is about 10,000 times used daily.

The success of the electronic support: in HIV patients could reduce the death rate to half of the national average. "We have reduced the death rate from heart disease by a third, the number of pressure ulcers halved by two thirds and the complication of bone fractures almost," said Halvorson. The example is obviously not transferable one-to-one on other health care system, but it can give us inspiration. Also, we are convinced that IT is an excellent way to support treatment processes and cutting red tape and improve the quality of ...