Claims Management
Apart from the actual physical injury that an adverse event can cause to patients or staff, the risk to the organization may be a lawsuit. Claims management includes activities associated with managing potential and actual claims or lawsuits. Serious adverse events are often treated as potential litigation, and as such, information must be gathered and protected. Sometimes the protection of information may seem contrary to the clinical engineer’s professional tendency to share information in order to optimize an investigation and minimize the likelihood of another similar injury. There is a balance that must be struck. Appropriate professionals both inside and outside the organization should discuss the issue of protection of information versus the common good. Protection may include sequestering medical devices thought to be involved in a serious incident, deciding whether a third-party independent investigation is necessary, interviewing involved staff members, and locating user manuals, policies, and procedures.
Risk Financing
Risk financing consists of activities to finance losses. This strategy includes maintaining and coordinating exposure data and values, for example, capital inventory, disposable values, replacement costs, and utility interruption costs. The most common method of financing the cost of risk is through the purchase of insurance. Organizations must make decisions regarding what to insure, the justification for the insurance, coverage limits, deductibles, and attachment points to ensure that all exposures are adequately covered. The legal liability of clinical engineers has been discussed in the chapter by Richards and Walter. Although insurance does not protect an engineer from being found guilty of faulty practice or negligence, it can provide financial assistance in the form of defense costs and payment of jury awards if the engineer is found guilty. The insurance company can eliminate the tribulations associated with a court case if the decision is made to settle a case with payment to the injured party before the case goes to court. Insurance polices rarely, if ever, will cover the cost of fines imposed by the court. The health care organization can purchase insurance for the professional actions of the engineer, product liability exposures, completed operations, errors, and omissions, and employee on-the-job injuries.
Contract Review
Contract review is integral in evaluating the adequacy of insurance, since contracts can contain both harmless and indemnifying language. In addition, an organization must ensure that outside contractors, such as installers, are adequately insured for work-related injures and the liability of their errors and omissions. While the risk manager may be aware of the need to finance these risks, the clinical engineer can participate in the technical oversight in order to be sure that outside contractors actually perform up to the expected standards.
Data Collection, Analysis, and Reporting
Risk managers must develop reports to demonstrate trends and indicators for the governing body and administration relative to adverse event reporting, loss prevention activities, and investigations. The risk management department may be responsible for developing policies and procedures related to patient safety activities such as informed consent, adverse event reporting and disclosure, product recall, and confidentiality. The department may develop and provide educational programs for these topics. In some hospitals, risk managers find themselves responsible for developing a program for management of adverse event exposures resulting from contracts, affiliation agreements, leases, purchase agreements, and warranties.