Program helps hospital assess, prevent risk

As a patient coming to the hospital, you may worry about things like making sure your surgery is on time, or not acquiring an infection during your stay. You're probably not even considering that an information system could shut down, impacting the ability of your nurses and doctors to order the tests needed for your treatment.

This risk, and dozens of others, are realities in all hospitals. But now, we've implemented a program that does the worrying for you.

It's called Enterprise Risk Management (ERM), a big title for a simple idea: stopping trouble in its tracks. The program identifies what the risks are across the hospital, and then does something to either fix or prevent each one according to priority.

For example, making sure all areas are connected to automated, and not manual, back up systems should a blackout occur is a high priority. Other issues, like reducing errors from manual processing of some payroll codes, are on the radar but not as urgent.

In addition to focusing on everyday patient safety, we're also documenting and managing the bigger picture risks that could negatively impact the efficient and effective operation of the hospital. Many hospital board members now come from private sector backgrounds, like banking and other industries that have long taken a big lens approach to figuring out what problems could paralyze their organizations.

Our ERM program makes the severity of each risk clear – should it occur – and it assesses the likelihood of it actually happening.

While a number of Canadian hospitals have begun to implement ERM, Sunnybrook has done so wiithout hiring new positions or using external consultants. We've leveraged existing resources and created a very cost-effective solution.