Address Both Systems and Behaviors for High Reliability, Speakers Urge

​Becoming a high-reliability organization "starts with understanding that you won't get there strictly through behavioral management," said Scott Griffith, founding partner and principal collaborator, SG Collaborative Solutions, and former airline pilot and chief safety officer for American Airlines, speaking September 26, 2016, at the annual conference of the American Society for Healthcare Risk Management in Orlando, Florida. Rather, "how your organization acts on a daily basis determines how reliable your organization is," he said, emphasizing that effective approaches examine both systems and behaviors. Lisa Ramthun, RN, MSN, CPHRM, FASHRM, vice president, risk management, St. Joseph Health System (Orange, California), noted that this concept was fundamental in her organization's efforts to increase the reliability of the root-cause analysis (RCA) process used by its facilities. Her organization developed a standard set of work for conducting RCAs, including a huddle process, a review team, a critical event investigation checklist, and an RCA toolkit. "What this is helping us to do is think critically about our identified root causes," said Ramthun. A key goal was to keep the redesigned RCA process simple.