Objective To comprehensively compare the methods and tools for medical risk management and assessment in the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Australia and Taiwan region (hereafter shortened as “four countries and one region”), so as to provide evidence and recommendations for medical risk management policy in China.
Methods The official websites of the healthcare risk management agencies in these four countries and one region were searched to collect materials concerning healthcare risk management and monitoring, such as laws, regulatory documents, research reports, reviews and evaluation forms, then the descriptive comparative analysis was performed on the methods and tools for risk management.
Results a) A total of 146 documents were included in this study, including 2 laws, 17 regulatory documents, 41 guidelines, 37 reviews and 49 documents about general information; b) The United Kingdom applied the integrated risk management; Australia and Taiwan adopted the classical risk management process, including risk identification, risk analysis, risk evaluation and risk control, while the United States and Canada mainly chose the prospective failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA) for clinical risk management; c) The severity of clinical risk was divided into five grades in the United Kingdom and Australia, and six in Taiwan, respectively. The frequency of medical risk was divided into five grades with four grade responses in above two countries and one region; and d) There were almost the same processes and tools about Root Cause Analysis (RCA), but a little difference in the objects of analysis in these four countries and one region.
Conclusion ?There are three models of risk management with the same assessment tools in these four countries and one region: the prospective risk assessment, the retrospective assessment based on occurred incidents and the integrated risk management. Although the grading of risk is similar, the definition of grading is different in the United Kingdom, Australia and Taiwan. The methods and processes of analyses on the adverse events are almost the same in these four countries and one region.
Citation： CHENG Lan,SUN Niuyun,WANG Li,LIANG Minghui,LI Youping,YUAN Qiang,CUI Xiaohua,LI Xiao. Comparative Analyses on Methods and Tools for Medical Risk Management and Assessment in the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Australia and Taiwan Region. Chinese Journal of Evidence-Based Medicine, 2011, 11(11): 1240-1246. doi: 10.7507/1672-2531.20110209 Copy