Healthcare Risk Management Explained

There was a time when healthcare risk management was a patient-focused activity. Healthcare risk management was part and parcel f patient care and education. It was considered part of professional healthcare to advise on diet, nutrition, medications, food preparation, exercise, the importance of cleanliness and so on. The purpose was to give the patient the ground rules that, if followed, would reduce health risks. All of that has changed over the past generation. Risk management today is a distinct discipline within business administration. Financial risk management is the term people are most familiar with. On that basis, one can see what a failure risk management can be, and the problems it can cause when it is ignores the basics.

Healthcare risk management no longer refers to the outward facing view of assisting patients in managing their health risks. Instead healthcare risk management now is inward facing, with the stated purpose of lessening the exposure of healthcare institutions all along the supply chain to litigation. Certification in healthcare risk management is now offered by most states. It is an expected certification for applicants to many administrative positions.

As long as the United States remains the only industrialized nation to not offer some type of universal health care coverage, the need for and the qualifications of US healthcare risk management professionals will be unique. When one studies the subject in the United States, the course topics give the best outline of what the subject entails.

Because most students come to the subject from a medical, rather than a business, background, the first course in a healthcare risk management curriculum is usually an overview of risk management as a subject in business administration. The overview tends to draw heavily on the financial and workplace safety models of risk management.

Once the student has learned to take a business admin point of view, subjects of relevance to institutional healthcare are covered. These include management of insurance claims, the legal trinity of malpractice, liability and negligence and risk exposure in the medical services supply chain.