Speaker 1: Healthcare Risk Management Week is recognized this year beginning June 19th. We're here with Kaylin Madrigal, a Risk Management Analyst at ECRI, to talk about the role risk managers play in keeping both patients and providers safe. In the healthcare context, what is risk management? What do risk managers do?

Speaker 2: Risk managers are essentially problem solvers. So the more we solve problems, the more we are able to identify patterns and trends and be able to recommend mitigation strategies to lower the risk. Every aspect of healthcare management could be a potential source of loss. So anywhere between your providers, your staff, your litigation and claims, even your facility operations. So if you think of risk management as an umbrella, the risk manager is holding the handle. And they carry the weight of loss prevention. But the protection that the umbrella provides reaches into every aspect of the organization from a business perspective. So as a risk manager, we often review organizational policies and procedures and make sure that that risk mitigation is embedded within our policies and procedures. We also analyze compliance with those policies and procedures. And we are also available 24-7 to staff to answer any questions or field any insight or provide insight because of our risk and liability experience.

Speaker 1: We saw providers literally improvising as they tried to figure out what treatments would be effective against COVID. We saw providers trying to deal with isolation precautions and deliver care. So as part of that risk management, working with them to say, you know, let's think through some of the consequences of what you're doing, here are some, you're maybe solving one problem but introducing another.

Speaker 2: Because this was a new situation for everybody, I think it really forced us to be that collaborative with people like infection professionals. So it wasn't just the patient safety and quality assurance, you know, triangle that we normally operate in, but we pulled in other clinician experts. And that multidisciplinary approach really honed in on or allowed us to really hone in on the best practices that we were able to implement at least, you know, midway through, which ended up saving a lot of lives. The approach basically asserts that patient safety is hinged on four foundational concepts, culture, leadership, and governance, patient family engagement, workforce safety, and learning system. And fun fact, risk management is involved in all four of those aspects. Each of those four foundations cannot operate without the other. In order to support each of those, we need risk managers to make sure that leadership and governance is operating effectively, and that goes directly into our influences, directly influences an organization's culture of safety. And we also care about patient and family engagement because we understand having patients directly involved with their own healthcare is an inherent best practice. And that's across the board, across care settings, across disciplines, everything, they need to be engaged. And so we support effective engagement by embedding that within our policies and procedures. And workforce safety, I mean, of course, we support our workforce through litigation and claims, but we also make sure that their safety is accounted for in our policies and procedures. And for learning system, we are well aware that we can not just continue throwing more education and training at clinicians. They are already overburdened by such things.

Speaker 1: And part of that, you know, like you said, monitoring for compliance with the policy and procedures. I would imagine part of it is not just making sure we're following the policies, but is also seeing if there's a problem with the policy that the staff are identifying as they're trying to live with it, and we need to update it.

Speaker 2: Exactly. Exactly. And that's the insight that we would specifically provide. And so we might, you know, offer suggestions for modification of policies and procedures to make sure that that risk mitigation is embedded.

Speaker 1: Kaylin, thanks so much for doing this.

Speaker 2: Of course. Thank you so much for having me, Paul.

Speaker 1: Thanks for watching ECRI Now. You can find more insights from the experts on YouTube and at ecri.org. Until next time, I've been your host, Paul Anderson.