From the October 2020 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
And as the compliance requirements ramp up, so do the risks of noncompliance.
The most acute set of risks falls on the hospital or health system: the organization can face a citation if it fails to comply with the Joint Commission’s requirements. And while it usually takes more than one citation to threaten any of the hospital’s approvals, even a single citation is embarrassing. Along with the potential for bad press and impact on patient volume, a citation also triggers the need for a corrective action plan, which ties up personnel and time.
Beyond the Joint Commission, though, there’s another world of risk. If a patient sustains a medical radiation-based skin injury — no matter how complicated the procedure — and there's a lawsuit, it’s certain that their lawyer will use the discovery process to learn whether or not the individual who performed the service had the appropriate training. Depending on how widespread those gaps in training are, too, they might be used as evidence of a pattern of negligence. The financial liability here would be significant, with likely secondary impacts to the organization’s reputation and referrals.
A “stick without a carrot”
Even those hospitals and health systems that recognize the urgency of safety training compliance face a dilemma: how to motivate their physicians and staff, especially if they already have substantial experience performing the procedure they’re being trained on. Some physicians have a massive clinical case load as well as accompanying administration, and find it hard to carve out a single hour in their day. Taking an entire work day to sit in a lecture hall is impractical if not unfeasible. Perversely enough, the only real tool the hospital can use to address this impasse is to threaten to withhold clinical privileges or hold back credentials. In other words, what they have is a stick — and no carrot to speak of.
If confidence is one threat to motivation and a busy, full schedule another, a third has to be the clinicians’ own bad past experiences with deadly dull or poorly organized trainings. This is where hospitals can either put in the time and energy to refine their approach to safety training or partner with an entity that’s already done that legwork.
Features of a modern safety training program
If synchronous, undifferentiated, lengthy training sessions are the past, what does the present of radiation safety look like? And beyond its effectiveness as education, how does this type of program help hospitals manage risk?
