Recent surveys identified 10 different high-priority risks US healthcare organizations face. However, security leaders can tackle these challenges efficiently and effectively by adopting a unified approach that views cybersecurity risk through a single comprehensive lens.
Enterprise risk management (ERM) offers a framework to help guide that process. With a unified program to tackle organization-wide vulnerabilities and understand the way risks interrelate within complex organizations, the concept has gained increasing popularity. This article explores what that means for healthcare leaders.
Enterprise Risk Management: An Overview
What is Enterprise Risk Management (ERM)?
Enterprise risk management (ERM) ties all aspects of risk management to a set of unifying organizational objectives. Rather than treating individual areas of risk – such as financial or operational threats – as distinct factors to be considered in isolation, the approach encourages leaders to consider all risk factors in their decision-making process.
Let’s imagine your procurement team wants to introduce a piece of AI-driven software that could improve patient diagnostics. A traditional risk management approach might treat this as an operational or security risk. Each department would be tasked with assessing the risks this new product presents to their specific domain. This would be fed to senior stakeholders to help make a procurement decision, and each department would be tasked with mitigating the specific operational or security threats.
But in the real world, risk does not exist in such clearly defined silos. Instead, the operational and security risks this new product presents also create risks to your patients, finances, and reputation. ERM would consider all these factors and approach the risk with a full view of the product’s organization-wide impact.
Why is it Important for Healthcare Organizations?
Not only does ERM help healthcare security leaders improve their risk management, but it also enables them to make a more compelling case in favor of prioritizing proactive cybersecurity practices.
For example, clinical safety and efficacy are likely to be major priorities for healthcare leaders, while cybersecurity is heavily underfunded. Yet there is actually a clear connection between the two: Studies show that data breaches lead to fewer hospital visits and increased patient mortality – which an organization-wide view of risk will make clearer.
Adopting an ERM program will help build a business case for unlocking more security resources, along with several other gains:
- Reduced Risk: An organization-wide view of risk helps to prioritize the most urgent vulnerabilities and remediate them faster – cutting overall risk levels.
- Improved Collaboration: Internal departments coordinate efforts to evaluate, mitigate, and eliminate risks – creating a more effective risk management program.
- Enhanced Performance: From better patient care and a stronger reputation to less financial waste and fewer losses, ERM can help meet organizational objectives.
But how does it work in practice?
Understanding Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) Frameworks
There are multiple established enterprise risk management frameworks, but most use some version of the following four steps:
1. Establish Organizational Objectives
ERM requires a clear set of core objectives to focus efforts on uniting different departments behind a shared goal. Rather than simply responding to emerging risks, the ERM program should take a proactive approach to ensure long-term security that aligns with your overarching aspirations – such as improving operational efficiency, financial results, or patient safety.
2. Identify Risks
Run exhaustive risk assessments to identify key risks and flag potential vulnerabilities. Examples could range from operational risks, such as outdated medical devices, to compliance risks in the shape of poor HIPAA documentation.
This differs from standard risk management in its emphasis on cross-departmental collaboration: every team should be involved in sharing insights and generating risk data. For example, rather than looking at cybersecurity through the narrow lens of IT systems, it would factor in risks that occur through HR (such as the frequency of employee security training) and procurement (such as the due diligence involved in selecting third-party vendors).
3. Prioritize and Remediate Risks
Create “risk scores” for each vulnerability identified and rank them to determine your most urgent remediation requirements. Higher risk scores should correlate with the potential threat to your organizational objectives; this helps to weigh up vulnerabilities across different domains, which traditional risk programs often deem “comparing apples to oranges.”
This enables ongoing remediation: Your ERM program should always address the next set of risks and create systems or policies that mitigate them. These steps could range from investing in more recruitment to combat the risk of staffing shortages to replacing software that causes an undue cybersecurity threat.
4. Monitor Risks
Develop monitoring capabilities – ideally via centralized dashboards – that allow for continual risk monitoring. There should be processes in place to flag risks before they get out of hand and ensure swift and decisive remediation. For example, emerging regulations may pose a compliance risk that can be effectively dealt with given adequate ramp time.
These four steps create a comprehensive approach to organization-wide risk management. However, with a huge volume of risk data to generate, store, analyze, and leverage, most organizations will require a significant update to their software stack to cope.
Make ERM Simple with Intraprise Health
Intraprise Health, a Health Catalyst Company, offers innovative software and expert risk management services to help healthcare organizations navigate complex, ever-evolving threats with confidence. Our partners benefit from:
- Increased Visibility: Our BluePrint Protect™ platform centralizes all risk data to create a single source of risk insight and a cohesive risk register for organization-wide risk.
- Streamlined Processes: From automating risk assessments to simplifying risk data management, our software suite makes risk management easier to scale across complex organizations with multiple sub-entities.
- Expert Support: Whether you need support implementing gold standard cybersecurity frameworks or vCISO services, our expert team plugs gaps in your risk team and delivers best-in-class support.
Want to explore how we could help protect your patients, reputation, and bottom line?
