Identification of the Risk Related to a Process on Hospital Emergency Service: a Case Study

This paper, framed in a vast investigation, describes the application of techniques and methodologies in Organizational Engineering connected to the associated risk to the processes developed in an Emergency Service of an important Portuguese Hospital. The transactions performed in an emergency service and the consequent risk identification (negative behaviour associated to those transactions) is done based on static and dynamic models, developed during the business modelling. Any non-trivial system is better portrayed trough a small number of reasonably independent models. From this point of view it is important to look at the systems from a "micro" perspective, which allows us to analyse the system at the transaction level. All processes have some associated risk (inherent risk). Its identification will be decisive for future analysis and for the consequent decision over the need, or not, to study internal control mechanisms. This decision will depend on the risk level that the organization considers acceptable.