During Healthcare Risk Management Week, June 17-21, we’re taking a deeper look at how Ob Hospitalist Group’s risk management team supports OBHG’s hospital partners.
OBHG employs the SAFE program, a comprehensive hospital risk management and quality program implemented between OBHG clinicians and hospital partners to mitigate risk, improve patient satisfaction, and support quality outcomes. The program takes an enterprise approach to traditional hospital risk management tactics. It utilizes OBHG services to understand and analyze risk data and trends, key quality indicators and leading compliance risks. Hospital partners are provided with a holistic view of OB/GYN risk drivers and key opportunities for quality and patient outcome improvements.
OBHG’s risk management team is comprised of experienced obstetrics professionals. The team collaborates with clinicians and hospital partners to reduce risk and improve patient outcomes. They analyze data to identify clinical education and training opportunities, as well as diagnose trends. The team supports OBHG’s clinicians via the SAFE hotline and provides guidance to OBHG clinicians throughout their career journey. Additionally, they communicate with hospital partners and OBHG’s clinical team on risk mitigation strategies.
“We have a dual role where we’re partnering with the hospital, but we’re also serving as the liaison for the patient and we’re also supporting our clinicians. It’s a triangle, with risk management in the center.”
– Dia Patterson, OBHG Senior Risk Manager.
Our risk management team recently provided examples of how they’ve worked with our hospital partners:
- “I received an event from one of our hospital partners regarding water births. There was a lack of policy at the hospital and community midwives were taking advantage of this. The hospital risk manager and I discussed the issue from a risk perspective. Our OBHG clinicians were looped in to help address the lack of policy and parameters were put in place to address patient safety and potentially prevent any future incidents. Great teamwork and support on all sides.”
- “There were some OBED triage process issues at one of our hospitals that resulted in patients not receiving timely treatment for serious non-OB conditions. I met with OBHG’s clinical leader, hospital unit leaders, and the hospital risk manager to resolve the issue and assisted our clinical leader in implementing a best practice algorithm.”
- “The hospital questioned one of our clinician’s delays in assessing and treating patients. I worked with our clinician in outlining her clinical decision-making and system-related barriers to timely delivery of care.”
- “I recently worked with our Site Director and a hospital risk manager on how to address the care of a patient who required a judge’s signature to receive the care she needed. Our Site Director notified us about the case and I worked with the hospital risk manager to escalate the issue so that we could obtain the judge’s signature so that the patient could receive the care that she needed.”
- “There was a challenging patient case involving a private physician’s pregnant patient. If the private physician wasn’t available, OBHG clinicians would handle the delivery. There were conversations with the CMO and the risk manager to formulate a plan of care. While there were different viewpoints on how to handle the case, we reached an agreement on the plan of care and everyone felt supported knowing that we had a proactive plan in place.”
Thanks to the work of OBHG’s clinicians and risk management professionals, the addition of an OBHG program has positively impacted risk reduction resulting in fewer OB malpractice claims for many of our current hospital partners, as well as the reduction in malpractice payouts per lawsuit.
If you would like to learn more about how OBHG’s risk management team supports hospitals, let us know, we’d be happy to share more details.