Q&A: The Road to High Reliability

There’s no question that the healthcare industry’s intense focus on high reliability is warranted. After all, we are committed to “always,” meaning there is consistency in keeping every patient safe from harm every time (as well as our team members and affiliated providers).

Ensuring leaders have the skills needed to execute both nimbly and consistently is crucial to sustaining a culture of “always.” Evidence-Based Leadership^SM provides the execution framework to align goals, behaviors, and processes—to not only realize but to sustain high reliability at all levels of an organization.

Studer Group recently sat down with Mark Chassin, MD, FACP, MPP, MPH, president and CEO of The Joint Commission, to discuss patient safety, quality and what it takes to become a high reliability organization. Dr. Chassin will present on the topic of high reliability as one of six keynote speakers at the What’s Right in Health Care conference this August in Chicago.  

For the purpose of this Q&A, SG represents Studer Group and MC represents Mark Chassin.

SG: Is the healthcare industry making progress toward reaching high reliability?

MC: We have definitely made some progress, primarily in areas where we’ve made concerted efforts, such as improving The Joint Commission’s core measures or reducing central line infections. Overall, matched against the magnitude of all the issues, progress has been inadequate and has come only with great effort—project by project. Many healthcare organizations are experiencing “project fatigue,” because the need for improvement is so great.

Some organizations have committed to a different approach on the journey to high reliability. Their goal is different from adding more projects to the work plan. It is to achieve the ultimate goal of zero harm to patients and healthcare workers by transforming their organizations so that zero harm is the natural byproduct of the way they care for patients every day.

SG: Can you share a bit about The Joint Commission’s research and conclusions studying high reliability organizations in different industries?

MC: The Joint Commission Center for Transforming Healthcare has worked closely for about seven years with high reliability experts from academia and practitioners from many highly reliable industries—ranging from nuclear power to aviation—to fully understand what makes them tick.  We’ve married that knowledge with the Joint Commission’s deep understanding of healthcare’s strengths and weaknesses and developed a practical framework that organizations can use to evaluate their readiness for and progress toward high reliability. The framework specifies three major areas in which healthcare organizations need to change:

• A leadership commitment to achieving the goal of zero harm
• A full thickness culture of safety throughout the organization
• Adoption and deployment of sophisticated, measurement-driven approaches to process improvement—specifically; Lean, Six Sigma, and change management tools called Robust Process Improvement^TM (RPI)

In each of these areas, we’ve identified specific building blocks that describe what an organization looks like at various stages of maturity and next steps to make progress toward high reliability.

SG: What will be the focus of your keynote address at What’s Right in Health Care this August?

MC: Our current approaches to improvement in healthcare are not producing the results we want. In Chicago at What’s Right in Health Care, I want to focus on how and why high reliability offers a different approach, where we learn from organizations outside healthcare that have achieved exemplary safety records and sustained them for long periods of time. There are lessons we’ve learned from these high reliability organizations and specific steps that an increasing number of hospitals and health systems are taking to pursue the goal of zero harm.  I’ll be sharing those lessons with attendees and laying out a roadmap for high reliability.

This year August 2-4, 2016 at What’s Right in Health Care, Studer Group’s annual best practices conference, healthcare professionals will gather to learn how organizations are using evidence-based practices proven to increase quality and safety.

What’s Right in Health Care differs from other healthcare industry events by maintaining a focus on what is working well in healthcare and celebrating the nurses, physicians and administrators that are the heart of the industry.

Don’t miss critical industry updates, world-class keynote speakers and 35+ hands-on workshops with healthcare leaders from all types of healthcare organizations across the continuum of care. Presenters are carefully selected based on their top national performance and breakthrough results in areas such as employee engagement.

This conference offers 14 continuing education credit hours for healthcare professionals. Learn more and register at WhatsRightinHealthCare.com.