[Risk management as a means of quality assurance in the hospital]

Each modern organized hospital needs an effective risk-management. This does not only mean to avoid incidents to reduce insurance costs to a low level. Reduced on this aspect, the hospital management will not be able to reach a broad acceptance for the tasks of risk-management. Each physician naturally avoids incidents in daily hospital routine by following good medical practice in medical treatment. At the same time positive statistics will guide to an optimized high valued treatment quality. At first, critical situations have to be managed when they occur. A critical situation is very often forgotten after successful management and quality deficits stay as they are. Knowledge from the daily hospital routine are not used, procedures are not improved. There is no system of perpetous monitoring installed. Risk-management will guide to a process of continuous quality improvement in high risk departments, where processes and structures are not as good as they could be. In addition to measurements forseen by law, risk-management means constant evaluation of the quality of the own hospital treatment. Risk-management is not only extern quality assurance but also a intern program. It opens a wide field for self responsible measurements and own creativity in practical implementation.