Issue link: https://beckershealthcare.uberflip.com/i/1147537
36 CMO / CARE DELIVERY Why zero harm is a realistic goal for every hospital By Mackenzie Bean T he Joint Commission Center for Transforming Healthcare has a sin- gle, important mission: help health systems reach zero harm. e Joint Commission founded the Center in 2008 as a nonprofit affiliate and first start- ed working with healthcare organizations to reduce healthcare-associated infection rates. About three years later, the Center ex- panded its focus to assess the systems and structures behind healthcare organizations. Today, the Center helps hospitals trans- form into high-reliability organizations that have systems in place to consistently avoid preventable harm. "Transforming to high reliability is a multi- year process, and it is probably the biggest change initiative any healthcare organization can undertake right now," said Anne Marie Benedicto, vice president of the Joint Com- mission Center for Transforming Healthcare. "A lot of people want to start the journey to high reliability, but don't know where to start." Ms. Benedicto spoke to Becker's about high-reliability organizations and shared how healthcare organizations can adopt high-reli- ability science to limit preventable harm. Editor's note: Responses have been lightly edit- ed for style and clarity. Question: How realistic or attainable is the goal of zero harm? Anne Marie Benedicto: Mindsets regarding preventing harm have changed over the past few years, particularly around healthcare-ac- quired infections like central line infections or ventilator-associated pneumonia. We thought we could never eradicate them, and it was just a part of doing business. Now, we're actually seeing organizations get to zero harm for long periods of time for those specific in- fections. If you take that thinking and extrap- olate it, it really is possible — with the right technology, mindset, skills and leadership — to create an organization that is so strong that zero harm is a byproduct of what they do. Q: What does a high-reliability orga- nization look like? AMB: ere are three major characteristics of a highly reliable organization in healthcare. e first is a leadership commitment to zero harm. It isn't just about setting the goal of zero harm for the organization, but also making sure it is attainable by aligning resources around the goal. Second is a safety culture. e employees within an organization, including leadership, must recognize when harm could occur. ey need to be able to bring up unsafe conditions and opportunities for improvement. ey must also be able to solve and address the is- sues they bring up. e third characteristic is strong, robust process improvement skills. Performance improvement should be a com- mon skill set in healthcare. ere needs to be massive training on quality improvement so people do it as part of their daily work.