Risk management, miglioramento delle performance. Occupational safety (or work safety) is included among the critical factors which affect the quality of health services’ provision. Indeed, occupational safety influences both the health care providers’ productivity and the patients’ well-being. In most of the cases, occupational safety has been dealt with adopting a "micro" perspective, which focuses the attention on the patient-provider relationship and on the consequences of work unsafety on the well-being of these actors. Alternatively, the effects of occupational unsafety on managerial and organizational dynamics have been infrequently investigated. Therefore, there is a limited awareness of the importance of occupational safety to increase the sustainability of health care organizations. To contribute in filling this gap, the Interdepartmental Center for the Research in Law, Economics and Management of Public Sector Organizations (CIRPA) launched a research project in partnership with the National Institute of Work Injuries Insurance (INAIL), which was aimed at designing and implementing a heuristic approach to examine the economic implications of occupational safety and unsafety in health care organizations. This paper reports on a case study, which was performed during the initial stages of this project. It involved a hospital of national relevance operating within the Italian National Health Service (INHS). The study findings emphasize that occupational safety may pave the way for significant cost savings and indirectly contributes in enhancing the sustainability of health care organizations. The improvement of organizational safety allows to enact a virtuous cycle, reducing health care costs attached to work-related injuries and enhancing health services’ quality.
Keywords: Safety, Quality, Efficiency, Risk management, Performance improvement.
Paola Adinolfi, Carmela Annarumma, Gaetano Matonti, Rocco Palumbo, Gabriella Piscopo, in "MECOSAN" 103/2017, pp. 9-30, DOI:10.3280/MESA2017-103002