Risk management is essential for your healthcare organization. It ensures that your data and that of your patients is protected. It’s important for ensuring privacy, financial security, and maintaining HIPAA compliance.
However, it can be challenging in today’s day and age to manage risk effectively. Using GRC software is one important step in streamlining this process.
Let’s talk about the five primary risk management process steps. That way, you can implement a robust infrastructure protocol and checklist for your team.
The Five Steps In The Risk Management Process
Here are the key risk management steps you need to understand:
1. Understand The Risk
Before dealing with the risk, you must first understand what type of risk it is. There are several types of risk factors such as regulatory, market, environmental, legal, financial, and technological.
Once you understand the nature of the risk, you can begin to take the next step. Like with anything, having a target to hit allows you to narrow your aim. Proper GRC risk management software can bring risk factors to your attention to help guide you through this first step.
2. Analyze the Risk
Once you know what the risk is, you must analyze it. You have to determine the scope of the risk. Then you should determine the link between various factors in your organization and the risk itself.
Furthermore, understand what the severity of the risk is. That way you can prioritize it appropriately. If the risk actualizes, it could create significant disadvantages. If you’re manually managing risk, this process can be incredibly time consuming.
However, using software to automate the process, you can manage your risk, extending to your policies, documents, procedures, technology, and stakeholders.
Ultimately, you can map out a risk management framework that helps you move forward with confidence in your strategy.
3. Risk Assessment
An important part of risk management is to categorize the risks according to priority. Knowing the severity and type of risk, you can attack the most important and catastrophic ones first.
By ranking all of the risks, you’ll have a wider view of how you need to act as an organization. You may uncover some lower level risks that may not be as urgent but still important. This keeps you organized as you address each risk in a methodical fashion.
4. Resolve the Risk
Once you understand the risk and its priority, it’s time to act. You need to go into action to put the right processes, communications, and security in place.
Every stakeholder should understand their responsibility to mitigate risk. In a healthcare organization, risks can expand across multiple communication platforms, applications, documents, and data storage.
Using GRC software can help you keep track of risk mitigation through every stage of the process.
5. Continue to monitor risk
Once you’ve implemented controls to mitigate the risk, you still need to monitor the risk factors to ensure its likelihood of occurrence remains low. Risk management is not a one-time activity but rather an ongoing process.
This can occur due to changes in policy, documentation, technology, or innovations in cybercrime. Leveraging software and digital tools helps you review this risk, receive alerts, and ultimately scale your risk reviews.
Manage Risk With The Right Software
ComplyAssistant offers cloud-based risk management software that is an effective way to manage your risk and security. You can focus on compliance, integration, and strategy assessment.
You can analyze internal risks, vendor risks, and more. This allows you to maintain compliance with HIPAA and other healthcare industry regulations. Manage your compliance in one place and understand the stage of your progress with every risk area and project.
Schedule a demo with ComplyAssistant today. Make regulation management, incident management, internal assessments, and every part of your GRC efforts streamlined.