Patient Risk Assessment
Risk management practices are important for any organization, but in particular, health organizations because of patient care carry a more significant burden than other types of businesses.
Patient risk assessment is therefore important in identifying, assessing, analyzing and managing patient's risk while going through the healthcare process.
The use of informatics to assist with this area of management has been extremely helpful.
Specifically, electronic patient risk assessments help healthcare facilities communicate, integrate, educate and implement key concepts involved in promoting good quality patient care.
Without information technology to assist with these areas, the challenges become time consuming and limited in scope.
However, having informatics help organize and distribute this process greatly enhances its effectiveness.
Communication is a large part of patient risk assessments in healthcare.
The goal of communication is to create a culture that is transparent, open and fair.
It is also important to communicate a sense of leadership and support to the staff within this open environment.
By having information technology provide a means of communication between management, staff and the public, this open forum of transparency is created.
This is an effective tool in reducing patient risk as both problems and solutions are more likely to come forth.
Without informatics, this degree of communication would take much longer to accomplish in the forms of meetings, mailings, and announcements.
Electronic forums on the other hand distribute policies easily and provide a channel for anyone at anytime to strengthen the patient risk assessment program.
Information technology also helps integrate patient risk assessment plans.
Once policies are defined, these can be integrating into each department area to create uniformity.
Communicating policy and procedure is fine, but without integration into day to day operations, theory becomes wasted.
Informatics can easily transfer protocol data from a general policy into a specific policy to make integration simple.
For example, a hospital may decide on a new patient quality of care questionnaire as part of its risk management process on patient exit.
But because different areas have different quality indicators, this questionnaire changes per department.
To manually accomplish this would be difficult, but electronically quality indicators can be substituted for key phrases within the questionnaire thus tailoring it according to needs.
Instead of tremendous hours of integration, informatics allows this within minutes.
Other tools of an effective patient risk assessment also include education and implementation.
Education refers to both staff and public education to improve safety and quality of care.
Information technology allows this as it does in other areas of healthcare education by facilitating online learning.
Didactic sessions can be available for anyone to view, and staff that is required to participate in these sessions can be tracked to ensure compliance.
This leads into implementation as problem areas defined within a healthcare system need an easy means by which to implement better solutions as they appear.
The ability to change policy and procedure of patient risk assessment, and to distribute this to widespread public and private areas, is a clear advantage of electronic information technologies.
Overall, patient risk assessment is an integral part to quality patient care.
Manual efforts to invoke these tools have been helpful but are limited in scope.
This in turns limits the effectiveness because of delays in changing policy and procedure and in communicating information to staff and public areas.
By utilizing the abilities of informatics to rapidly communicate, integrate, educate and implement new patient risk assessment strategies, patient outcomes benefit more quickly.
Risk is therefore more efficiently reduced and patient's quality of care is elevated.
Information technology provides the best means to utilize patient risk assessments within healthcare to realize the goal of better patient health.
Patient risk assessment is therefore important in identifying, assessing, analyzing and managing patient's risk while going through the healthcare process.
The use of informatics to assist with this area of management has been extremely helpful.
Specifically, electronic patient risk assessments help healthcare facilities communicate, integrate, educate and implement key concepts involved in promoting good quality patient care.
Without information technology to assist with these areas, the challenges become time consuming and limited in scope.
However, having informatics help organize and distribute this process greatly enhances its effectiveness.
Communication is a large part of patient risk assessments in healthcare.
The goal of communication is to create a culture that is transparent, open and fair.
It is also important to communicate a sense of leadership and support to the staff within this open environment.
By having information technology provide a means of communication between management, staff and the public, this open forum of transparency is created.
This is an effective tool in reducing patient risk as both problems and solutions are more likely to come forth.
Without informatics, this degree of communication would take much longer to accomplish in the forms of meetings, mailings, and announcements.
Electronic forums on the other hand distribute policies easily and provide a channel for anyone at anytime to strengthen the patient risk assessment program.
Information technology also helps integrate patient risk assessment plans.
Once policies are defined, these can be integrating into each department area to create uniformity.
Communicating policy and procedure is fine, but without integration into day to day operations, theory becomes wasted.
Informatics can easily transfer protocol data from a general policy into a specific policy to make integration simple.
For example, a hospital may decide on a new patient quality of care questionnaire as part of its risk management process on patient exit.
But because different areas have different quality indicators, this questionnaire changes per department.
To manually accomplish this would be difficult, but electronically quality indicators can be substituted for key phrases within the questionnaire thus tailoring it according to needs.
Instead of tremendous hours of integration, informatics allows this within minutes.
Other tools of an effective patient risk assessment also include education and implementation.
Education refers to both staff and public education to improve safety and quality of care.
Information technology allows this as it does in other areas of healthcare education by facilitating online learning.
Didactic sessions can be available for anyone to view, and staff that is required to participate in these sessions can be tracked to ensure compliance.
This leads into implementation as problem areas defined within a healthcare system need an easy means by which to implement better solutions as they appear.
The ability to change policy and procedure of patient risk assessment, and to distribute this to widespread public and private areas, is a clear advantage of electronic information technologies.
Overall, patient risk assessment is an integral part to quality patient care.
Manual efforts to invoke these tools have been helpful but are limited in scope.
This in turns limits the effectiveness because of delays in changing policy and procedure and in communicating information to staff and public areas.
By utilizing the abilities of informatics to rapidly communicate, integrate, educate and implement new patient risk assessment strategies, patient outcomes benefit more quickly.
Risk is therefore more efficiently reduced and patient's quality of care is elevated.
Information technology provides the best means to utilize patient risk assessments within healthcare to realize the goal of better patient health.
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