4 Strategies to Increase Patient Safety and Reduce Risk

In recognition of National Patient Safety Awareness Week, we encourage all our insureds to identify ways to improve patient safety and reduce risk. In this post we’ll focus on the office setting and the interactions between medical professionals and their patients.

The office practice is the most common setting for physician-patient and dentist-patient contact. These interactions present an opportunity for physicians, dentists and their staff to foster a positive experience for patients. A recent article in Physicians Practice (login may be required) offers up four ways medical professionals can help ensure patient safety (and decrease the risk of a lawsuit as a result). These include:

• prioritizing communication between you and your patients;
• asking your staff to interact with patients more;
• having strong policies and procedures in place; and
• maintaining excellent documentation.

These strategies present sound risk management tactics for patient safety and satisfaction while reducing the likelihood of error, and decreasing the potential for exposure to claims of malpractice.