On-Demand Learning Lab: Navigating Risk in Healthcare Quality and Safety-Learning Lab: Navigating Risk in Healthcare Quality and Safety

Video Transcription

Video Summary

The learning lab focused on how healthcare organizations can navigate risk by integrating risk management, quality, and patient safety into one enterprise-wide approach. Presenters Carolyn Bailey and Brenda Barton from Blessing Health System explained that their organization moved away from siloed, reactive risk handling toward a proactive, cross-functional model supported by leadership, committees, dashboards, and ongoing communication.<br /><br />They outlined a practical risk management cycle: identify risks through rounding, interviews, surveys, occurrence reports, meeting minutes, and external alerts; assess them using likelihood, impact, and velocity; respond by accepting, transferring, mitigating, or monitoring; and then track outcomes and report progress to executives and the board. A heat map helps prioritize the highest-risk issues.<br /><br />The presenters shared examples of how quality and risk work together in daily practice, including daily safety huddles, weekly check-ins, root cause analyses, debriefings, process mapping, and follow-up on action items. They emphasized creating a “just culture” where staff feel safe reporting problems and near misses.<br /><br />Several committee structures were highlighted, including patient safety, mortality review, infection prevention, sepsis, stroke, workplace violence, and an Epic workflow surveillance committee. Real-world examples included improving electronic health record workflows, addressing allergy alerts, reducing sepsis mortality, and improving stroke and ICU outcomes.<br /><br />The session concluded with practical tools such as rounding questions, written surveys, and emerging risk assessments for new services. The overall message: risk management works best when it is visible, collaborative, data-driven, and continuously aligned with safety and quality goals.

Keywords

risk management

patient safety

quality improvement

enterprise approach

just culture

root cause analysis

healthcare organizations

risk assessment

safety huddles

dashboards