Risk Management on the PRMS Blog

It’s one week after Memorial Day, and summer is upon us. Soon, most students will be on vacation, your patients’ schedules may be disrupted because of their own vacation plans or their need to take care of their children, your staff will be asking for time off, and even you will want to find a few days to escape. Here are a few things to think about: 1.  Let’s start with your o ...

Several of us at PRMS were talking the other day about the number of violent incidents in just the past few weeks where the alleged perpetrator was said to be mentally ill. Perhaps it’s our professional sensitivity to news events involving the mentally ill, or it could be that we’re located in Virginia and the negligence trial against Virginia Tech, arising from the mass murder ...

Converting from paper to electronic health records may clear out some office clutter; however, doing so will not, on its own, improve patient care and safety. Electronic health records (EHRs) and other health information technology come with their own set of safety issues. For example, EHR systems that do not fit well within the workflow of your office or facility are of great ...

How’s your new exercise program going? Have you lost five pounds yet? Mine’s going nowhere and I’ve gained weight. More importantly, have you stuck to your resolution to improve your risk management skills? We make it easy for you.  We have short, focused papers on the issues that bedevil psychiatrists in their daily practices: – Do I have to release this patient’s record to he ...

A Guest Blog by Donna Vanderpool, MBA, JD, Vice-President of Risk Management It’s the start of a new year, so I just cannot resist offering one resolution to consider for 2012. Here it is: try to document your patients’ treatment records so that someone else can read the record and understand what happened in your treatment and why. The “someone else” could be another clinicia ...

It seems that for psychiatrists, the last two weeks of December are times of either feast or famine.  Some psychiatrists say it’s very busy in their offices. They attribute this to rising stress and waning sunlight; patients wreaking havoc on the appointment book for travel, shopping, entertaining, and having kids at home; student-patients home from college checking in; last mi ...

A Guest Blog by Donna Vanderpool, MBA, JD, Vice-President of Risk Management When physician acquaintances find out that I make my living assisting physicians in managing their professional liability risk, they always want to know the one thing that they can do to avoid being sued for medical malpractice. There is no panacea, of course; nothing can actually prevent all lawsuits. ...

At  PRMS, feedback is important and critical for us to serve you better. With each insurance renewal package, we include a feedback card. We regularly receive compliments from our psychiatrists on our comprehensive coverage and the knowledge and experience of our staff. The one area where we can improve is our accessibility by phone. We know that psychiatrists are always presse ...