Value of an HRO

Highly Reliable Organizations create and support an environment of collective mindfulness in which all workers look for and report small problems or unsafe conditions when they are easy to fix and before they pose a substantial risk. Challenges that make achieving high reliability in health care more difficult than other industries include higher workforce mobility, high turnover in teams and care of patients rather than machines.

Most HROs are in industries that deal with aviation, machines and processes that are mechanical in nature. At the very heart of hospital care are patients, of which little is often known, and whose behavior (and families’ behavior) varies from others and changes over time. These factors create a degree of unpredictability that produces challenges for hospitals that other industries do not face. Cultures that are highly reliable reward and highly regard staff that draw attention to potential errors and near misses. HROs focus on prevention and proactively mitigating errors rather than being reactive and waiting for errors to happen before addressing them.

Become a High Reliability Organization