Risk Management

Pineville Medical Center

The purpose of risk management in a health care organization is assessing risk and developing strategies to manage it. Pineville Medical Center purpose of risk management is the preventative process for managing risk. At Pineville medical center risk management involves identifying risks to patients and staff, it also involves understanding how risks impact patients, and strategizing ways to avoid or lessen those risks.

With more than 100 million ER visits in the United States each year, managing emergency rooms effectively is a challenge. Patients expect to be treated quickly – whether they’re having a heart attack or simply need treatment for a small cut.

Concerned about finding ways to decrease patient wait times, PCA pulled together a team of 85 medical, quality and risk management experts in 2002 to analyze operations that affect patient care in the emergency room.

The team developed several strategies for optimizing patient flow, enhancing the effectiveness and efficiency of patient care, improving patient satisfaction and minimizing the level of confusion that impacts patient care decisions.

Two such strategies included improving measurement and monitoring and how patients are prioritized for treatment in the emergency room.

In 2004, PCA introduced five measures for capturing and evaluating wait times in the PCA Emergency Departments. These five measures include time of arrival, time placed in bed, time greeted/contacted by a physician, time disposition decision was made and time patient leaves the ER.

This information was captured for each of the 5.3 million ER visits to PCA’s 199 emergency rooms in 2004. PCA is now in the process of implementing a system-wide program that will combine the measurement data with each patient’s diagnosis, outcome, demographic, payor and billing info. By analyzing this information, PCA will be able to estimate volume by time of day, determine how much staff is needed and when...