A Model for Risk Assessment in Health Care Using a Health Care Failure Method and Effect Analysis

Objective: The purpose of this research is to track and reduce risks so as to prevent errors within the process of health care. The aim is to design an organizational information model using error prevention methods for risk assessment.

Method: In order to assess the risk of errors, the Health Care Failure Mode and Effect Analysis is used. To determine the causes of the errors, the Root Cause Analysis is used.

Results: Results of the process analysis following corrective measures shows that the risk assessment of individual error causes reduced by73.6 percent. Re-evaluation of the risks to the whole process shows that the overall risk score was decreased by 45.5 percent. The proposed model has a significant impact on professional attention, communication and information, critical thinking, experience and knowledge. The average impact of information communication technology on the reduction of medication administration errors is 56 percent. These findings represent an increase in the quality of care.

Conclusions: The results of our research are theoretically and practically useful and verifiable in other environments, if the level of the organizational culture and the culture of recording errors in combination with the precise recording of data to assess the risk of errors in the process. The model provides a standardized data format that can be used for the purpose of defining factors for the occurrence of errors, for developing a base of knowledge for learning from mistakes and for continuous verification and adaptation to changes in the environment in order to prevent errors.