Strategies to Prove Risk Management = Value

In the two years that the Healthcare Risk Control(HRC) System has surveyed its members about the challenges in the year ahead, demonstrating risk management value has been among the top five concerns. In 2010, 48% of risk managers responding to HRC’s survey chose demonstration of risk management value as among their top worries for the year ahead; in 2009, 44% of respondents identified it as a hurdle.

“It’s an ongoing concern,” says Georgene Saliba, R.N., B.S.N., M.B.A., CPHRM, FASHRM, administrator, risk management and patient safety, Lehigh Valley Health Network (LVHN) in Allentown, Pennsylvania. During her tenure as president of the American Society for Healthcare Risk Management (ASHRM) in 2009, the association launched a strategic initiative, called the Value Campaign, to raise the profile of the risk management profession. Today, the project remains a focus of ASHRM’s strategic plan.

Some of the risk managers’ worries are driven by budget cuts. As institutions make across-the-board cuts, “there’s not always an appreciation that risk management should not be cut,” says Saliba.

This concern is heightened by the fact that risk management departments are not revenue-generating departments of...