PS 1995; 46:473-476
Copyright © 1995 by American Psychiatric Association
Risk management strategies in the provision of mental health services
SM Soltys
Mid-Missouri Mental Health Center, Columbia 65201, USA.
Psychiatric settings provide unique challenges for engaging in risk
management activities. The author reviews principles of risk management-
-the systematic effort to avoid harm to patients and the subsequent threat
of financial loss--as they apply to mental health organizations, including
preconditions necessary for a risk management process, identification of
risk, evaluation of risk, and the actual risk management process. He
outlines recent relevant directions of the Joint Commission on
Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations, especially the shift to
continuous quality improvement and the organization of the 1995 standards
around major functions such as improving performance. Today few mental
health care organizations can afford not to have programs that actively
seek to reduce and eliminate risk, the author believes, not only because of
the financial consequences to the organization but also because a solid
risk management program can significantly improve patient care.
