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Over the past decade, healthcare organizations have increasingly adopted high-reliability organization principles to improve patient safety. The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, defines HROs as organizations that operate in complex, high-risk environments for extended periods without catastrophic failures. This approach is grounded in five core principles: sensitivity to operations, reluctance to simplify, preoccupation with failure, deference to expertise and commitment to resilience.
As more healthcare organizations, including The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, embrace HRO principles, an opportunity exists to apply these practices beyond patient safety. Extending this approach to patient access and care coordination can help improve operational performance, patient outcomes and the overall patient experience.
Patient safety as the starting point
Hospitals and health systems that implement HRO principles have seen firsthand how it can strengthen patient safety. By taking a disciplined approach to identifying risks, learning operational challenges and continuously improving processes, health systems can build safer, more reliable care for patients.
For example, UT MD Anderson has used this approach to help drive measurable improvements in quality and safety. Benchmarking with the nation’s top academic medical centers provides valuable insight into organizational performance and helps identify opportunities to improve. More importantly, it reinforces a simple lesson: principles that strengthen reliability in patient safety can also strengthen reliability in patient access.
The next frontier: patient access and care coordination
As healthcare organizations continue to apply HRO principles, there is an opportunity for practitioners to apply this approach beyond patient safety. A patient’s experience begins before they walk into the hospital. From referrals and scheduling to registration and care coordination, these early interactions shape access to care and overall patient experience. Applying HRO principles to these processes can help health systems improve efficiency, reduce delays and create a more seamless patient experience.
Similar to how HROs help organizations identify and address potential failures before they affect patient safety, the same can be applied to operational challenges that disrupt or delay access to care.
Applying HRO principles to patient access means approaching operational challenges with the same rigor used for patient safety. It is crucial to review patient intake and registration, appointment scheduling, data collection and communication in this same manner to ensure patients receive timely, accurate and empathetic guidance.
The same approach can also strengthen coordination of care. Standardizing processes for appointment scheduling, diagnostic testing and communication across care teams can reduce inefficiencies that can delay treatment. In turn, organizations can improve reliability across the patient journey – not just during clinical care but from a patient’s very first interaction with the health system.
Applying high reliability to patient access
Expanding HRO principles beyond patient safety begins with culture. Organizations need an environment that encourages open dialogue about operational challenges to allow for continuous improvement and intentional action. By identifying root causes, redesigning processes, and creating learning feedback loops health system leaders can strengthen patient access and improve patient outcomes and experience.
At UT MD Anderson, this approach has led to structured, replicable processes for reviewing operational challenges, assessing patient feedback and identifying opportunities to improve patient access. Weekly multidisciplinary meetings provide a psychologically safe environment for teams to discuss challenges, review reported access and coordination of care safety events, align on solutions and implement course corrections.
These efforts have contributed to measurable improvements in patient access. Today, 9 out of 10 patients receive an initial call from access staff within four business hours, and referral-to-appointment creation averages two to three business days. While there is always more work to do, these early results show how applying HRO principles beyond patient safety can strengthen access and improve the overall patient experience.
The bottom line
HRO principles have transformed the way healthcare organizations think about patient safety. Looking ahead, practitioners can extend these ambitions across the patient journey to create more reliable, responsive and patient-centered care. Because for patients, reliability doesn’t begin in the exam room, it begins the moment they seek care.
Dr. Hassid is the associate vice president of access strategic operations and professor of plastic surgery at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.
The post The importance of aligning new patient access with high-reliability organization principles appeared first on Becker’s Hospital Review | Healthcare News & Analysis.
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