Applying high reliability principles to patient experience

Abstract

In highly-regulated, complex systems, the pursuit of high reliability has become common for safety and quality improvement. High reliability organizations (HROs) are characterized by mindful organizing – a collective behavioral capacity to detect and correct errors and adapt to unexpected events. This adaptive mindset is especially important in healthcare given its dynamic nature and the potential for physical and emotional harm. At the same time, patient experience performance also contributes to national rankings and reimbursement, yet it often remains disconnected from safety and quality improvement efforts and resourcing. To complicate the issue even further, unlike high reliability, patient experience lacks a well-accepted, unifying framework for improvement, evidence-based practices are inconsistently applied, and multiple definitions of patient experience exist - almost as many as ways to measure it. That said, given that both HROs and patient experience are about intentional focus on (and caring for) the people in systems, we believe there is a tremendous opportunity to align efforts in practical and scalable ways that will drive safety, quality, outcomes, and people-centeredness.