A Message From Leadership
Dear Renown Medical Staff Colleagues,
We are delighted to share that, with the support of Medical Staff and Nursing leadership, Renown Health is embarking on our High Reliability Journey. As introduced in February, High Reliability Organizations( HROs), which were initially developed in the nuclear and aviation industry, are defined in Managing the Unexpected by being able to“… operate under very trying conditions all the time and yet manage to have fewer than their fair share of accidents.” These principles have been very successfully introduced into healthcare with consistent improvements in safety and 60-90 % reductions in serious harm events over the course of a few years. We have engaged Press Ganey, the national leader in HRO training, to help us on our journey to zero preventable harm.
Across Renown, we already use several HRO tactics, such as safety huddles, peer review, safety event review teams and root cause analyses. We also use some of the HRO language in how we escalate concerns or highlight clarifying questions. Press Ganey will help us by performing an assessment of our practices and providing recommendations which we can then incorporate into our HRO roadmap.
• Phase 1, the assessment, started last month in October and will take 2-3 months.
• Phase 2 will begin in the Spring of 2026 and will be our opportunity to co-design our own universal reliability skillsets and roll-out plans.
• Phase 3 will consist of the following 14 months to provide training for everyone, from Board members and executives to all our colleagues on the front lines. This is the phase where we incorporate and refine our reliability skills into our everyday practices to reduce the risk of error and enhance the safety barriers to keep errors from reaching our patients.
As stated above, we already perform many of these practices as each one of you does in your daily work and lives. This journey is not meant to be disruptive but rather transformative in allowing the work done every day to become consistently safe and great. And, by helping to eliminate preventable harm, we will achieve our vision of creating a healthier future through exceptional care.
Be well, Bill
Bill Plauth, MD, MMM Chief Medical Officer, Renown Health Associate Dean, Clinical Affairs, UNR Med 10315 Professional Circle Reno, NV 89521
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