Many activities require risk management such as in the financial sector when stock or currency trading takes place, but how often do you hear of risk management used within the dental industry? Dentistry might seem a world away from the stock market, however, that does not mean that a dentist nor a dental practice is not at risk, and in particular legal risk.
Unfortunately, the risk is ever-present that an action taken by yourself or someone within your dental practice could lead to a situation where an individual, normally a patient, sees fit to make a legal claim. The specifics of such a claim will differ but within the dental industry, they are most likely to relate to dental treatment not being deemed satisfactory by the patient.
Thankfully, such legal claims are extremely rare, and many dentists go through their entire careers without once being subject to one. Nevertheless, that does not mean that they were never at risk of one. Likewise, you or your dental practice could be at risk of a legal claim and what we wish to do in this article is to give you some simple risk management advice to avoid one.
First Step…Retain A Lawyer
Before we go into some specific strategies regarding risk management we cannot go further without recommending that you hire a good lawyer on a retainer. No matter how much risk management takes place, it cannot stop a determined patient, even if they are unjustified, from starting legal proceedings against you.
Even if you know 100% that their claim is false, frivolous, and simply an exercise in chancing their arm, do not take anything for granted and that means having a lawyer on a retainer who can handle the case both before and if it gets to court.
Risk Management In Three Stages
The approach to risk management which has worked well for many medical companies and organisations, including dental practices, has three distinct stages. These are Identifying Risks, Quantifying Risks, and Mitigating Risks.
Identifying Risks
One of the most common scenarios, when a dental practice is subject to a legal claim, is that the issue in question could, and should, have been identified as a problem by the dental practice previously. This points to the fact that in most businesses the day-to-day activities often mean problems are inadvertently missed due to everyone being so focused on their work.
To address this you should take time out to analyse every aspect of the operation of your dental practice, and seek to uncover anything which puts it at risk. You should do this dispassionately so that anything which does come into view is not used to point the finger at anyone, including yourself. You can make this process more effective by asking a third party, perhaps another dentist, to assist you to identify potential risks.
Quantifying Risks
Once you have identified potential risk elements within your dental practice, the next step is to quantify them. We do not mean count them but instead evaluate how much of a risk they present, and more to the point, how big a risk they are to your dental practice.
Risk quantification is assumed by many to simply be the financial risk, but you can also quantify the time that will be lost, the loss to reputation, patient numbers loss, and opportunity loss. Next, assess how much you can control the risk and the priority you are going to give the elimination of each one.
Mitigating Risks
The third stage of your risk management is to plan how you are going to mitigate the risks you have uncovered. This would obviously start with the mitigation of those risks you identified as having the potential to cause the biggest losses. Within your mitigation plan you should include the following:
- How the risk is to be mitigated.
- Who is responsible for actioning the mitigation?
- How much time will the mitigation take?
- What resources are required to complete the mitigation?
- What evidence will satisfy you that the mitigation has been successful?