“Wherever the art of Medicine is loved, there is also a love of Humanity.” – Hippocrates
Modern healthcare represents a heavily diversified domain/industry comprising public and private systems, processes, institutions, mechanisms and linkages. The idea of healthcare in the contemporary world lends itself to many interpretations – this domain has also evolved into a complex paradigm that caters to the health requirements of all citizens in the modern nation state. It is necessary to discern a critical imperative to preserve the health and wellness of service providers that operate in this domain, given the limited number of such professionals available in any geography.
Meanwhile, the risks faced by healthcare service personnel – human capital – remain considerable and hence, the definition – “healthcare risk management as comprising the systems and processes employed to uncover, mitigate, and prevent risks” that arise in the course of duties of healthcare service providers. Thus, the flow-based diagram presents an interesting method or technique that can aid policy makers to locate and analyze such risks. The mechanisms of the flowchart can empower policy planners and administrators to manage at risk healthcare providers and ensure their continued availability to serve human populations.
- Examining Variations
Variations in the degrees of manifest and implied risk must undergo detailed examination within flowcharts. This is necessary with regard to healthcare “industry’s ever-changing regulatory, legal, political, and reimbursement climate, wherein the matter of healthcare risk management has become more complex over time.” For instance, policy makers could devise specialized risk insurance policies that focus on the imperative to manage at risk healthcare providers. Such policies could be configured to confer substantial financial support to healthcare service providers, and ensure the wellbeing of their immediate family members. In addition, specialized insurance policies could assist healthcare professionals to develop greater levels of engagement in their line of work. It would help to consider the creation of multiple policies designed to offset a variety of threats faced by at risk healthcare providers.
- Devising Risk Management Systems
Risk management programs may incorporate definitive stances, wherein risk reporting is allotted high priority. This is necessary because early information about infections or health conditions can assist employers and institutions to respond faster. It serves well to put together the outlines of such risk management stances and strategies within spaces of connected diagrams; additionally, employers and institutions may develop, update and archive health profiles of service providers as part of method to manage at risk healthcare providers. As part of this initiative, designers could construct fluid diagrams that outline the rationale and components and methods that animate such stances. The connected diagram could also operate as blueprint that allows policy makers to design the implementation (and subsequent assessment) of such programs.
- Deploying Technology to Reduce Risks
A judicious deployment of technology in modern healthcare systems can help institutions manage at risk healthcare providers. Therefore, technology would serve as an enabler of risk management paradigms and processes. For instance, data analytics modules can be designed and implemented to support decision-making, departmental cohesiveness, surveys of risk profiles, risk prioritization measures, and resource allocation methods. The tech-based intervention must emerge in the back-ends and front-ends of risk management systems and processes to register better effect. In addition, technology can accelerate periodic assessments that enable healthcare institutions to manage at risk healthcare providers.
Additionally, it would be beneficial to envisage a matrix of complex dimensions – underlined by technology-driven applications – to drive qualitatively improved methods of risk management aimed at healthcare service providers.
- Creating Enabling Governance Structures
Risk managers working for healthcare institutions could work to devise governance structures as part of efforts to manage at risk healthcare providers. This could be a wide-ranging arc, primarily designed to identify the scope and expanse of risks. The governance structure may include the development of graded response plans and systems intended to safeguard healthcare service providers. Pursuant to these objectives, healthcare system administrators could devise flow-based diagrams and outline the sinews and junctions of governance structures therein. These diagrams also remain instrumental when risk managers devise functional interfaces between institutional systems and healthcare service providers seeking support from prevailing structures and mechanisms. In this instance, the flowchart serves as an operating mechanism that aids project designed to manage at risk healthcare providers.
- The Primacy of a Vision
An expansive vision that encompasses the modern healthcare sector is crucial to operationalize the project to manage at risk healthcare providers. For instance, policy makers and administrators must constantly survey the landscape to identify emerging risks and levels of uncertainty. Once identified, healthcare institutions must invest efforts to “score, rank, and prioritize risks based on their likelihood and impact of occurrence.” Such initiative may find expression within the spaces of flowcharts; this analytical construct enables thinkers to locate and evaluate various forms of risk and design mitigation stances in response. Additionally, connected diagrams empower thinkers to classify risk and its allied aspects – this could bolster the expansive vision of the healthcare industry, and drive the emergence of strategies to manage at risk healthcare providers. Further, a number of connected diagrams could be sequenced to paint the contours of the expansive vision referred to above.
- Negotiating with Complaints
Complaints emanating from healthcare service providers could provide extraordinary mileage to initiatives designed to manage at risk healthcare providers.
Complaints would be the red flags that assist institutions to enforce standards of healthcare performance, develop assessment protocols, re-visit the best practices underlying the structures of risk management systems, reduce the instance of litigation, and build confidence in institutional processes and mechanisms, and more. Thus complaints could be classified into multiple silos as part of attempts to actively manage at risk healthcare providers. Policy planners could analyze the nature of complaints in a bid to address the core issues and develop effective remediation. Further, healthcare institutions could build smarter mechanisms – or overhaul entire processes – as an outcome of analyzing complaints from service providers.
- Ideating on Support Mechanisms
Support mechanisms and support structures – this binary combination bears significant potential to reinforce risk management systems and procedures. These would be core ideas that lend heft to efforts designed to manage at risk healthcare providers. For instance, policy planners may innovate on existing systems and processes to develop new versions of support structures that uphold the interests of healthcare service providers. These structures and mechanisms may be non-financial in nature, or could include financial incentives that boost the interactions between institutional mechanisms and individual service personnel. It is possible and required to diversify or expand the remit of support structures in tune with the requirements of the modern healthcare industry. The successful operation of such structures and mechanisms may encourage more citizens to participate in the healthcare industry as service providers – thus benefitting larger populations of lay citizens.
- In Conclusion
These explorations, centered on the idea of using flowcharts, are put forth to empower thoughts on managing risk for healthcare providers. We may design new configurations of connected diagram to further the methods and scope of exploration, in a bid to provide enhanced protections and assurances to healthcare service providers. In addition, flow-based diagrams may prove instrumental in expanding the contours of risk management systems and processes, thereby introducing additional layers of complexity and agency. In enabling these scenarios, flowcharts serve as crucial constructs that may equip modern healthcare with path breaking embellishments.