Author: Phillip Green, 12 June 2008.
Leading business insurance broker, Alan Boswell Group, looks at the benefits for care homes of an efffective risk assessment programme.It’s easy for care home managers to assume that
risk assessment is only there to ensure regulation is adhered to. In reality, it can offer the care home or nursing home owner a great deal more.
Risk assessment can help you improve the running of your care home, it can help you to tailor your
care home insurance cover and it can also give your insurer the power to defend claims against you.
In fact it’s the best way to meet your obligations while also improving the safe running of your care home.
For example, setting down a Fire Safety Plan is a legal requirement for a care home and helps you to consider how quickly and effectively you are able to get your residents to safety. But it’s not just your legal obligations that a Plan addresses. If you need to evacuate for any reason – a gas leak or even terrorist attack – you know you have a tried and tested procedure in place.
Manual Handling requires regular assessment to ensure you meet standards, but effective
risk management here can also make good working practices simply a matter of course.
However,
risk assessment is not only a process for making improvements to working practices in your care home, but also an effective tool for tailoring
business insurance for care homes.
Check for Inadequacies in your Care Home Insurance
How do you know you’re properly covered if you haven’t carefully measured every risk facing your care home? A thorough
risk assessment can reveal inadequacies in your
care home insurance programme, areas where cover could be increased or limited. You can then be reassured that the
care home insurance in place adequately reflects the risks you’re facing. Without it, you could face a claim that you’re not covered for – or be paying for
business insurance to cover a risk you’re not running.
Finally,
risk assessment is a simple way to demonstrate you are exercising due care. Your care home can be extremely well run, but without documented evidence of proper
risk assessment you can’t prove that you have adequate practices in place.
If you do face a claim,
risk assessment makes it very clear to your insurer that you have carefully considered the potential risks facing your care home and have put measures in place to combat them.
So although at first sight
risk assessment seems to follow in the footsteps of regulation, it can actually help you to improve the running of your care home and reassure you that your
business insurance cover is up-to-date and at the right price.
Get Expert Guidance on Care Home Insurance
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care home insurance needs, contact us by phone on 01953 455600 or complete the
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