Platte Valley Medical Center is on a journey to become a High Reliability Organization.
High Reliability Organizations (HRO) believe the unexpected is common, small events make a difference, failure is a strong possibility and lives are on the line. HROs succeed in avoiding catastrophes despite operating in these high stress, high risk environments through mindfulness and adopting a constant state of vigilance. HROs use five core organizing principles: preoccupation with failure, sensitivity to operations, reluctance to simplify, commitment to resilience, and deference to expertise. The first three emphasize anticipating problems while the last two emphasize containing a problem after it has happened.

Preoccupation With Failure
Preoccupation with failure, better said preoccupation with learning, captures the need for continuous attention to even seemingly inconsequential failures that could be symptoms of larger problems in a system. If something minor goes wrong, HROs don’t just shrug it off. They look for failure, embrace it and learn from it. HROs also look for how the system could fail and fix it before it causes harm.

Preoccupation With Failure at SCL Health
We promote preoccupation with failure through safety event reporting (including good
catches), daily huddles, cause analysis, and shared learnings to name a few.

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