Study behavioral issues with metrics
Some topics are obvious when it comes to using metrics, but using metrics to study the behavior of employees and physicians doesn't get as much attention, notes David G. Danielson, JD, CPA, senior vice president for clinical risk management with Sanford Health, a health care network based in Sioux Falls, SD.
Businesses can use metrics to measure various financial issues, and health care providers also study various clinical issues; but less known is how metrics can be used to study behavioral issues, Danielson says.
"Typically, it's people that cause problems," he says. "People do things that cause us to end up in a lawsuit later or which can cause patient harm. So, we started looking at items like patient complaints and staff complaints, and I think that's where the future of risk management is going to go. Really, the core of what we're trying to do in risk management is to avoid lawsuits and avoid paying claims, so you have to focus on the key cause, and that is the people who generate those claims for you probably 80% of the time."
Focusing on behavioral issues does not negate the efforts to improve systems and procedures, and it is not a matter of trying to pin the blame for errors or quality issues on individuals, says Alan H. Rosenstein, MD, MBA, medical director with Physician Wellness Services, Minneapolis, a consulting firm that has worked with Sanford Health to develop risk management metrics for the health system. But it would be equally wrong to overlook the importance of behavioral issues in patient safety and quality, he says.
"You can look at outcomes all day long, but safety researchers are showing us that you can build the best system in the world; and in the end it still comes down to human behavior," he says. "So, in order to prevent some of these missteps from happening, you need to have to study human factors and behaviors. The new generation of risk management metrics really need to look at some of these human behavioral issues that lead people to do their jobs well or poorly, may lead to incident reports, create communication issues, and ultimately have a negative impact on the hospital's risk."
Danielson says risk managers must tailor their use of metrics to the particular concerns of their own organization. Some measures will be common to most health care providers, but each organization will have its own concerns; and the metrics should be developed accordingly rather than trying to use only a set of standard metrics, he says.
"This hasn't typically been the purview of risk management," Danielson says. "It's something we need to get more involved in and focus on, in order to do our job more effectively."
Sources
Alan H. Rosenstein, MD, MBA, Medical Director, Physician Wellness Services, Minneapolis, MN. Telephone: (888) 892-3861. E-mail: [email protected].
David G. Danielson, JD, CPA, Senior Vice President for Clinical Risk Management, Sanford Health, Sioux Falls, SD. Telephone: (605) 333-1000. E-mail: [email protected].
Some topics are obvious when it comes to using metrics, but using metrics to study the behavior of employees and physicians doesn't get as much attention, notes David G. Danielson, JD, CPA, senior vice president for clinical risk management with Sanford Health, a health care network based in Sioux Falls, SDYou have reached your article limit for the month. Subscribe now to access this article plus other member-only content.
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