Risk Management

Communication errors have been identified as a significant cause of malpractice actions taken against both physicians and unfortunately the healthcare institutions by whom they are employed or contracted. RADAR is a pre-emptive, risk management solution for hospitals to prevent litigation. It is a technology that closes the medical communication loop thus making communications failsafe between healthcare givers. Hospital risk managers and administrators realize their business is vulnerable to malpractice suits against their physicians who occasionally and accidentally see their patients fall through the cracks as a result of deficiencies in the current system of communications. One avoided malpractice litigation will save the hospital large legal expenses and pay for the RADAR system many times over.

The Physician Insurance Association of America/ACR joint study of 1997 also revealed the following findings:

  • 10% of lawsuits were related to the failure to forward significant and critical information.
  • Communicating important test results represents a significant use of the physician’s time.
  • The more confusing situation occurs with findings that are more significant, or unexpected and potentially critical, though they are not immediately emergent for the patient.

In the field of risk management, RADAR provides:

  • Particular attention to closed-loop communications of non-emergent, significant, unexpected findings
  • Unique follow-up recommendation alert module with “tickler file” feature that automatically creates a reminder alert when the time of the recommended follow-up approaches
  • A permanent database of documented completed closed-loop medical communications stored by RADAR for as many years as specified by the enterprise user
    • Database may be populated with additional data points to enhance analysis
  • An audit trail of the timeline of the entire life of each alert communication, from creation to receipt acknowledgement and ultimate alert closing
  • Complete date and time stamped detail of the parties involved in the closed-loop communication of each alert
  • Performance measures against stated goals in successfully communicating alerts