The role of risk management in reducing costs and increasing patient safety

In the last few years risk managers have been very frustrated with the high costs, or sheer unavailability, of medical malpractice insurance. The frustration is very understandable, given the rising financial costs of litigation for medical negligence. This presentation will aim to recommend a way out of this conundrum which works equally well regardless of whether the prevailing litigation environment be high or low, or one which is a fault-based or no-fault based compensation system, or whether a conventional insurance, self-insurance, or pooled risk insurance scheme. This paper will seek further to recommend that it's time risk managers took more responsibility themselves for reducing medical errors and optimising their control of risk. By understanding the concept of Total Cost of Risk, risk managers would be able to reduce losses, relying less on the insurance market, and accept responsibility for risk themselves, and, as a result, lowering insurance premiums in the process as the risk will have been taken away from insurance underwriters.