As a?health care manager, it is important that you understand factors that can pose risks and adversely impact your organization. Part of your job will be to?determine factors that can affe

 As a health care manager, it is important that you understand factors that can pose risks and adversely impact your organization. Part of your job will be to determine factors that can affect your health care organization and develop ways to avoid or address them. This process of identifying potential risks and taking mitigating steps to prevent them is known as risk assessment and risk management.  

Hi Everyone,

To provide a friendly thoughts for this Risk Assessment Worksheet (link above):

1. in column 1, feel free to list any internal or external risk factors that can adversely affect the healthcare organization. To give you ideas, the worksheet’s Preparation section has some examples and links, and I have a list below. Plenty of ideas! It does not matter what type of healthcare organization you choose to write your perspectives from (i.e. from the perspective of a hospital, nursing home, home health agency, etc.). the idea of column 1 is to just list the risk factor. 
2. n column 2, write a bit on how that risk factor (that you identified in column 1) can adversely impact a healthcare organization, i.e. what are the potential adverse impacts on the healthcare organization of that risk factor? 
3. in column 3, write a bit on what a healthcare organization can do to help prevent that risk (in column 1) from happening (best), or what they can do if that risk does take place. In other words, write about strategies that a healthcare leader can take, or the organization can take, to offset that risk factor. The Preparation section has some great links on PDSA and Strategic Planning, which can give you some background information on how you can help approach risk factors! (risk management requires good planning, organizing, etc.!). 
4. There is no minimum word count for each box
5. Each row is what relates to each other, meaning you fill this out left to right, each row is its own risk factor that you are writing about
6. You do need to list two (2) citations at the bottom that you used as References. Feel free to cite any of the links in the Preparation area of the worksheet, you can cite the textbook, etc. 

As resource to you for column 1, in addition to ideas and links in the Preparation of the worksheet, some examples of Risk Factors that can affect a healthcare organization which you might to choose to include are: 

1. Increased number of regulations and compliance requirements

2. Ability to be competitive in the market for pay/compensation and benefits

3. Federal and State guidelines for healthcare staff to be vaccinated, and staff refusing

4. Cyber threats, including hacking incidents

5. Physical threats (gun violence, robberies at the pharmacy, etc.)

6. Staff shortages from quarantine or sick call offs

7. Pandemics

8. Increases in costs of supplies

9. Supply Chain shortages (inability to procure supplies due to manufacturing shortages)

10. Contracted vendors not living up to their contractual agreements (third-party vendor management)

11. Lack of physician engagement (providers not wanting to engage in some of the organization's goals)

12. Poor reputation in the community (bad media and word-of-mouth).

13. Medical Malpractice Lawsuits

14. Lack of staff morale and poor staff engagement in quality improvement efforts

15. Employer Wrongful Termination Lawsuits

16. Avoiding state deficiency surveys and maintaining good Joint Commission Surveys

17. Natural Disasters

18. Technology downtime events (electronic medical record going down for a period of time)

19. Harder to make a profit margin (rising wages and supply costs) 

20. Increased competition

You can choose any 10 from the above, or from your own ideas, or just Google threats and risks to healthcare facilities. The Week 5 Learning Activities also has content you can review. 

Feel free to private Message me with any questions (Messages area, top left of course home). 

Thanks!