Healthcare is unlike almost every other industry because risk is rarely contained within the organisation that creates it.
Over the years I have become increasingly convinced that one of the most misunderstood aspects of healthcare is where risk ends up.
When a new health initiative is announced, most of the attention naturally focuses on the vision. We talk about the building, the people behind it and the difference it might make. Communities rally behind the idea, potential funders or donors are inspired by the ambition and support grows around the possibility of doing things differently.
What receives far less attention is a more important question: who carries the consequences when things don’t go according to plan?
Healthcare is unlike almost every other industry because risk is rarely contained within the organisation that creates it.
When a person experiencing severe trauma, suicidality or significant mental illness reaches the limits of a service’s capability, the next call is not made to a shareholder or an investor. It is made to an ambulance service, emergency department, public mental health team, general practitioner or community health organisation.
Families are left trying to navigate a system they may already struggle to understand. The risk does not disappear; it simply moves elsewhere.
That is why I have always been cautious when healthcare is discussed primarily through the language of vision, disruption or entrepreneurship.
Innovation is essential and our communities need new ideas, investment and new approaches to care. However, innovation does not reduce the obligation to manage risk; if anything, it increases it.
Much of what makes healthcare safe is invisible to the public. Accreditation, clinical governance, credentialing, workforce standards and regulatory oversight rarely feature in media releases or fundraising campaigns.
The reality is that healthcare operates as a connected system, regardless of how individual organisations choose to describe themselves.
Public, private, philanthropic and not-for-profit providers draw from the same workforce, rely on the same hospitals during crises and serve the same communities.
A serious incident rarely affects only one organisation. Confidence can be shaken across an entire region, and other providers are often left managing both the clinical and reputational consequences despite having had no involvement in the original decision-making.
For that reason, I have never viewed governance, accreditation and regulation as barriers to innovation. They are the safeguards that allow innovation to be trusted.
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The more vulnerable the population, the more important those safeguards become.
The question is not whether a service is public or private, government funded or philanthropically funded, established by a health service or established by entrepreneurs. The question is whether accountability matches the level of risk.
Because when healthcare succeeds, the benefits are shared across the community. When it fails, the consequences are usually shared as well.
Trent Dean is CEO of Gateway Health, providing community health and wellbeing services to individuals, families and communities across north-east Victoria and southern New South Wales.
This article was first published on Mr Dean’s LinkedIn feed. Read the original article here.