Question

How are risk management and quality management used in health care? What is the difference between them? What are the similarities? Explain.

Answer 1

Ans) Risk management:

- An improvement technique designed to achieve two purposes:

(1)identify areas of operational and financial risk or loss to a health-care facility and its patients, visitors, and employees, and

(2)implement measures to lessen the effects of unavoidable risks and losses, and cover inevitable losses, at the lowest cost. It is a management function that is outcome oriented.

Quality Management:

- An improvement technique that examines patterns of activity to define the optimum performance and determine how to achieve that performance. It is a clinical function that is process oriented and focuses on the improvement of patient care.

- Quality management focuses on adhering to manufacturing requirements, international standards such as ISO 9001, and different government regulations – domestically and abroad. Risk management, on the other hand, focuses on the effects of uncertainty as well as the probability and consequences of potentially adverse events from a company-wide point of view. Despite their differences, however, risk management and quality management share common ground in a few areas.

- Similarity:

From a high level, both disciplines rely on cause-and-effect analysis techniques to decide which corrective and preventative actions are the best choice. Both risk management and quality management strategies must find ways to account for uncertainty.

- After all, in the quality management space there is no such thing as an absolutely perfect quality product.

- Handling risk is implicit in the day-to-day tasks of a successful quality management professional.