Dossier n. 146/2007 [Abstract] Risk management in Emilia-Romagna Region. 1999-2007

Since some years Emilia-Romagna Region has implemented some experiences for healthcare quality and risk reduction within the clinical government approach. These experiences are developed through the accreditation process of healthcare structures and with a specific project started in 1999, following the indications of the Regional Health Plan.

Every healthcare organization has received guidelines to develop its own plan to adopt safe behaviours and rules, to realise preventive risk analyses using also spontaneous reporting systems of dangerous situations or incidents (as already implemented in other high risk organizations, such as aviation or nuclear plants), to “sterilize” dangerous situations. The new approaches integrate aspects of patient’s safety to aspects of occupational safety and wellbeing in workplaces.

One of the main goals of 2006-2009 Regional Health Plan is to develop in every Local Health Unit the function of risk management, applying it to the whole healthcare system and examining more and more its contents.

Every Local Health Unit will have to develop a plurennial program detailing short and middle term goals that connect risk assessment with appropriate and sustainable actions, which can be documented in a specific annual report.

This Dossier presents the actual situation in the regional Local Health Units as far as risk management is concerned, with some examples that show also weak spots.

The volume is organized along three lines: regional proposals for health management and analysis of some particular themes (incident reporting, mediation, role of forensic medicine, …); first examples of programming and integrated reporting in the Local Health Units and comments on organization solutions; experiences of implementation of the proposed models and tools.

The authors’ desire is to share the first results and to encourage the development of new and more articulated initiatives through confrontation.