Joint Commission Unveils Online Resource to Promote High-Reliability Healthcare
Zero preventable harm is the goal of every healthcare organization, and a new online application from the Joint Commission Center for Transforming Healthcare can help groups reach that goal. Oro 2.0 can assist hospital leaders with determining their organization’s status across multiple components of high reliability that will let them achieve zero preventable harm.
Hospitalists are integral to this process, says Coleen Smith, RN, BSN, MBA, CPHQ, director of high reliability initiatives for the Joint Commission. “Hospitalists are a crucial piece of improving the quality of an organization. Physicians routinely getting involved in high reliability and leading those activities are how we want high-reliability hospitals to look,” says Smith.
The Oro 2.0 application has two major elements. The first is an assessment tool for senior hospital leadership that covers 14 different performance areas, covering components such as safety culture and leadership. After an assessment is complete, the application issues a report that identifies strengths and opportunities for improvement and directs the user to specific resources, which are the application’s second element: a library of published materials about specific areas of high reliability offering more than 125 references and tools. These materials will help organizations educate themselves about the 14 components included in Oro 2.0’s high-reliability model.
This is an idea long overdue in healthcare, which lags behind other industries, according to Smith. “We know high-reliability industries like nuclear power and commercial aviation do very complex daily work but have far fewer bad things happening,” she adds. “Healthcare is nowhere near that state of reliability, but it needs to get there.”
Participation by hospitalists is required to make such a change, Smith says. She hopes they will access Oro 2.0’s resource library to understand the solutions the Joint Commission is proposing. “Then they can go to the senior leadership of their hospital and ask them to consider committing to zero patient harm,” she says. “They can support their senior leadership in this work and be vocal about their interest in pursuing high reliability and zero patient harm.”