Risk cultures in healthcare: The role of accountancy

The healthcare sector faces a perfect storm of risks – from severe skills shortages and rising cybersecurity threats to economic strains and the unintended consequences of AI – all of which affect patient care. This report explores how a collaborative risk culture is vital for navigating these complexities and what accountancy professionals should be doing to facilitate it.

This research, based on discussions with nearly 100 risk and financial professionals working in healthcare around the world, delves into the integration of clinical, operational, and financial management to effectively manage today’s fast-changing risk landscape. The consensus was that this alignment enhances improved decision-making, including resource allocation, and empowers healthcare organisations to deliver high-quality patient care – the common purpose shared across the sector.

The report is a call to action for the sector to break down silos and embrace a more cohesive approach to risk management. It includes 11 action points for financial professionals:

1. Financial professionals are central to translating the purpose into a common language across the organisation, but also distilling it, making sure their organisation edits down their essence to all fundamentals; otherwise, purpose will become misaligned and meaningless.
2. Today’s supply chain risks require finance teams to take more practical actions in forging and negotiating new partnerships with suppliers, sharing risks and driving greater transparency across supplier agreements.
3. Finance bosses should be visible and lead discussions on key issues, while also supporting structured engagement between chief medical officers, administrators, and finance teams that allow them to find common ground and collaborate towards shared goals.  
4. To build a supportive risk culture, finance must create the right metrics and KPIs through risk and performance management systems, using both quantitative and qualitative information.
5. Accountants can foster trust and transparency, ensuring that whatever operational change that is driven by AI is debated, assessed and embraced responsibly.
6. Accounting professionals are crucial in helping to establish and monitor a strong risk governance system that motivates employees to take calculated risks to achieve their goals.
7. Accountancy professionals are key to communicating what is and what is not acceptable up and down the organisation, making sure the risk appetite is understood on all levels. As decisions around budgets influence the pace and quality of patient outcomes, it is also crucial for accountancy professionals to ensure that appropriate resource allocation is aligned with risk appetite.
8. Boards must make tough decisions on where to invest scarce financial resources, as bolstering cybersecurity measures inevitably detracts from available funding for the prime objective of patient care. These are important judgement calls for financial leaders in assessing the relevant trade-offs and providing insightful scenario analysis on how much you spend versus all the damage from a cybersecurity attack.
9. Finance teams should accept that fraud exists and take responsibility for implementing measures that actively look for it. They also can help by promoting more open, transparent cultures where concerns about all these acts are communicated cooperatively up and down the organisation.
10. Our profession can take a leading role in creating policies that promote a ‘just culture’ – one which is more accountable – and championing ethical decision-making that supports this.
11. It is crucial that financial professionals become more aware of their surroundings and biases when determining the appropriate course of action, especially as AI inputs become increasingly relied on.