Risks reduction in health care business during COVID crisis

COVID-19 crisis is impacting hospital business in many ways. As the hospital is the place
of giving health care services to the patients, we are not affordable for facility shutdown and
work from home. Moreover, hospitals are the front line in COVID-19 crisis and there are many
possible risks for us to prevent from occurring. In the current situation it is vital to identify
those risks and react as fast as possible in order to reduce the risks and impacts on business.
First of all, it is very important to avoid facility shutdown by the local authorities to
ensure business continuity. As the hospital is the place of accepting patients, COVID patients
are also one of them. Therefore, there is high chance of spreading COVID in the hospital and
the consequence of that would be the facility shutdown which has the highest impact on the
business continuity. So, we need to prevent this at all costs by following local COVID measures.
We also need to implement fundamental emergency measures and all the recommendations of
the local authorities and WHO. We may also require restrict/banning employees from travelling
and isolate the staffs who got COVID positive properly to contain the infection and prevent
from spreading to others. Continuous monitoring and reviewing the above mitigating actions is
also necessary to prevent suspension of services.
Secondly, there is a high chance of avoiding hospitals by the patients in order not to get
infected by COVID. Then, the revenue of the hospital would decline definitely. Therefore, we
need to have some innovative ways like Telemedicine to adapt the changes in customer needs.
So that patients don’t have to come to hospital, and they can consult their doctors via online
consultation from home. We can also offer home visit care and use some protective gears
(different levels of PPE) for the patients to accept procedures in the hospital. So that, the
patient would feel safe to get our service and the risk of declining revenue would also be
prevented. Tracking and reviewing for the risk is a must do act and we also need to invent more
innovative ways and use our competitive advantages to get more patients because there is a
silver lining of COVID crisis that patients cannot go abroad for health care due to travel
restrictions.
As an operational risk, there would be supply chain and distribution delays for daily
consumables, machine parts and equipment because of restriction of air cargo and closed
borders. Moreover, there is a high chance of increasing operation cost due to supply chain
disruption. Therefore, we need to strengthen our relationship with suppliers and look for
opportunities to build relationships with additional suppliers. Having multiple options or back-
ups would help us to build resiliency into our business. Moreover, we can also make bulk
purchase for mandatory items to prevent increasing operation cost and being out of stock.
Monitoring and reviewing stock control and act accordingly would help us to reduce the chance
of this risk to be at acceptable level.
 Another operational risk is the human resource risk. As we are accepting patients, our
staffs would have a high chance of contacting COVID positive patients and getting infected. If
we have to isolate them after being infected, there would definitely be a shortage of staffs and
work overload. So that, the remaining persons would get stressful and depressed over time.
Moreover, isolated staffs can also feel stress because of the disease and separation from the
family and friends. As the consequences, there would be many difficulties in maintaining quality
and standard of health care. Therefore, we need to give support both emotionally and
financially for the employees. We also need to prepare for a high chance of high turnover rate
during the crisis for many reasons. So, hospital HR would have to act as fast as possible for
replacing the missing positions. If we can reduce the time period of staff shortage as much as
possible, we may be able to maintain our quality and standards. This process is also needed to
monitor and review continuously until the crisis is over.
As we need to use Telemedicine for online consultation during COVID, we need to
prepare for some infrastructure risks. Risk of connection lost can be happened sometime and it
would affect on the customer satisfaction which in turn lead to decreasing revenue. Therefore,
we need to check the readiness of IT infrastructure for the high load of online consultation
remotely. Moreover, we need to plan to respond the risk as quickly as possible by an IT team.
Occasional review of IT infrastructure and thinking about upgrading would also be necessary.
In addition, there would also a moderate chance of leaking patients’ and hospital
confidential information because of cyber-attack. It would lead to affect hospital reputation and
function definitely. Therefore, we need test our IT security systems for those attacks and
harden email systems to help mitigate against scams and phishing attacks. Awareness and
training programs for employees are also needed to build stronger security culture. Regular
security check by IT team is necessary for avoiding this cyber risk.
Finally, proper communication system is needed more than ever during the crisis to
avoid miscommunication problems. As we already have good communication, the chance of
occurrence of this risk quite low. However, we still need to check our communication mediums
although we have proper communication channels with employees, partners, suppliers,
authorities, and the public. As we cannot afford the consequences of miscommunication, we
need a regular review of our ways of communication.