Risikostyring i offentlige helsetjenester

Abstract

Risk management in public health services is the subject area for these articles. The first article; Risk Management in Health care Organizations – a Literature Review, reviews recent studies concerned with the subject areas, risk management, risk assessment, human factors and patient safety, in order to examine these issues: 1. Are tools and methods from the field of risk analysis/risk management within healthcare transferable to Norwegian community schools and healthcare organizations? 2. Will the use of risk analysis identify likely risks, and suggest preventive measures that can lead to increased quality, increased efficiency and reduced costs? 3. Costs and benefits of doing a risk analysis – can it lead to reduced long-term costs in community healthcare organizations? The second article; Risk Management in Planning of Community Services – an Analysis of Historic data, is a case-study research of historic data from six Norwegian patients, conducted as a counterfactual analysis. All the patients are diagnosed with autism most of them also have mental retardation. Both articles are written from a complexity and selection perspective, where human factors are targeted as an important risk for threatening the safety of patients in hospitals and other healthcare organizations. The reasons why human errors occur are explained both from a person-centered approach and a system approach, reflecting the general tendency from literature