FMEA at a residential care facility

Abstract

In the healthcare industry, reliability of the care provided at residential care facilities has come to the forefront as a major concern of residents and their families. Management at these facilities understands the high liability involved with residents' safety, but they do not perform formal analyses to mitigate the risk. Failure Modes and Effects Analyses (FMEAs) have become a very popular method to mitigate the risk involved with health care products [1–2], but can also be extended to analyze an entire process at a residential care facility which provides older adults the high quality residential living and healthcare services they need. One particular residential care facility understands and shares the concern for the well-being of its residents, so its management decided to perform a Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA) on their Emergency Alert System (EAS) and supporting processes.