Healthcare risk management is the practice of identifying and preventing potential hazards within a healthcare setting. It's practiced by allhealthcare providers in order to meet the requirements both of the law and of liability insurance carriers.

The standardisation and the accreditation drive, especially led by the international sector played a key role in sensitising hospitals about the risk management concept in the recent years. Moreover, the rapid rise in the incidence of occupational hazards, avoidable mishaps, hospital malpractices, sentinel events and consumer litigations have re-emphasised the importance of having a comprehensive risk management programme in hospitals. This also led to the development of the risk scoring matrix and the priority grid.

The risk management programme in hospitals, monitor important risk and quality indicators which include: unplanned return visit, misplaced / mislabeled medicines, failure to perform ordered test, failure to report or document test results, adverse drug reaction, patient or visitor accident. This helps the hospital to analyse the process, identify flaws and quality of care issues and suggest constructive changes, like for example, accounts receivables collected in a timely manner.