Becoming Highly Reliable

Can health and human service leaders reboot the high-reliability organization (HRO) concept of the 1980s to address the today’s challenges in the field? According to a new perspective piece – High-Reliability Organizing: Refreshing A Proven Framework For Modern Health Care Challenges – the answer is ‘yes.’ The key is shaking up the old and making the HRO concept a verb – “high-reliability organizing” – as in, “the active state you want your organization to be in.”

The HRO concept describes consistent performance over time across clinical, operational, and financial domains. The concept is based on five principles: preoccupation with failure . . .