Performance improvement through proactive risk assessment: Using failure modes and effects analysis
نویسندگان
1 Health Information Management, School of Health Management and Information Sciences, Tehran University of Medical Sciences
2 Baghiateallah University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran
3 Department of Medical Information Management, Isfahan University of Medical Sciences, Isfahan
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doi
چکیده
Introduction: Cognizance of any error-prone professional activities has a great impact onthe continuity of professional organizations in the competitive atmosphere, particularly inhealth care industry where every second has critical value in patients’ life saving. Consideringinvaluable functions of medical record department — as legal document and continuityof health care — “failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA)” utilized to identify the waysa process can fail, and how it can be made safer. Materials and Methods: The structuredapproach involved assembling a team of experts, employing a trained facilitator, introducingthe rating scales and process during team orientation and collectively scoring failure modes.The probability of the failure-effect combination was related to the frequency of occurrence,potential severity, and likelihood of detection before causing any harm to the staff or patients.Frequency, severity and detectability were each given a score from 1 to 10. Risk prioritynumbers were calculated. Results: In total 56 failure modes were identified and in subsetsof Medical Record Department including admission unit dividing emergency, outpatient andinpatient classes, statististic, health data organizing and data processing and Medical Codingunits. Although most failure modes were classified as a high risk group, limited resourceswere, as an impediment to implement recommended actions at the same time. Conclusion:Proactive risk assessment methods, such as FMEA enable health care administrators toidentify where and what safeguards are needed to protect against a bad outcome evenwhen an error does occur.
