Risks are an everyday occurrence in healthcare. But how do you know which ones to prioritize?
In post-acute care, risks include medication management, patient falls, staff burnout, protecting personal health information, and more. Some risks are frequent but low impact, while others are rare but potentially life-threatening.
That’s where risk management comes in. With the right strategies and tools, your team can focus on high-impact, high-likelihood risks—and reduce harm before it happens. Here’s how healthcare professionals can identify, prioritize, and reduce risks to ensure safer care for patients, staff, and their organizations.
Risk management in healthcare is the process of identifying potential hazards, assessing how likely and severe they are, and taking steps to minimize their effects.
A structured risk management approach can help you:
Risk management typically follows a cycle:
This process is continuous—and everyone on the team has a role to play.
So how do you decide which risks to act on first?
One effective tool is a likelihood and impact matrix, which helps you weigh two factors:
Risks that score high on both are your top priority.
For example: Patient falls are common in populations of older adults with limited mobility, poor balance, and cognitive impairments. Falls can cause serious injuries, decreased independence, and hospital stays.
By using this tool to prioritize risks, teams can focus their energy where it matters most.
Imagine a home health nurse visits a patient with a pressure sore and notices signs of increased drainage. She plans to update the patient’s medical record but gets called to another urgent visit and forgets. The next nurse is unaware of the changes and doesn’t monitor the wound closely.
This is both a clinical and compliance risk. It could lead to patient harm and legal consequences.
Organizations could address this risk many ways, including using checklists or electronic reminders for documentation, handoff tools to communicate during shift changes, and quality assurance processes or audits to monitor documentation trends and find root causes of problems.
In addition to checklists and communication strategies, healthcare organizations can use other tools to address potential concerns:
While every organization is different, these risk categories often top the list of concern:
Once a risk is identified, your team can respond using one or more of these common strategies:
Importantly, any response should include:
Reducing risk isn’t just about paperwork—it’s about people. Leadership must prioritize safety, encourage transparent reporting, and support continuous learning. A “just culture” helps staff speak up about near-misses and challenges without fear of punishment.
If you haven’t already, consider adding short, regular “safety huddles” to your team’s schedule. These quick check-ins can highlight concerns and keep risk top of mind.
Reducing risk isn’t just for managers or nurses. It’s a team effort. Whether you’re assisting with personal care, maintaining equipment, or managing a care plan, your actions support patient safety every day. By focusing on risks that are both likely and serious, you help create a safer, more resilient organization.
Showd.me can help deliver the essential training post-acute care providers need to boost risk prevention and promote a culture of safety for patients, residents, and staff. Best of all, we take on all the administrative burdens that come with managing annual training, so you’re team can be more hands-on when it comes to risk management. Click here to see how we’re helping post-acute care providers save time, reduce internal training costs and ensure compliance, all without having to manage a thing.