System Safety in Healthcare

Curing the Risk Management Process in Hospitals

Authors

  • Dev Raheja
  • Maria C. Escano, M.D.

Keywords:

risk, risk management, process, healthcare

Abstract

The risk management process in most hospitals is sick. The symptoms are clear:

  • There are more fatalities from medical mistakes than there would be if a jumbo jet crashed every week
  • There are 40 incorrect surgeries performed a week
  • Up to 30 percent of nurses have musculoskeletal injuries from handling overweight patients
  • Most hospitals are at a three-sigma level of quality
  • There has been practically no reduction in the number of adverse events in hospitals during the last 10 years

The system can be cured, but we need the right caregivers, including surgeons and physicians, who can cut out the non-value processes and replace them with high-value transplants.

Author Biographies

Dev Raheja

Mr. Dev Raheja has been a System Safety and System Reliability Engineering consultant for over 25 years. His range of consulting encompasses transportation systems, electric power systems, high tech industry, aerospace, defense systems, medical systems, and consumer products. He has conducted training in several countries including Sweden, Australia, Japan, UK, Turkey, Germany, Poland, Singapore, Brazil, South Africa, and Canada. He has done training and consulting work with NASA, U.S. Army, GM, Boeing, Eaton, Nissan Aerospace, Litton, General Dynamics, ITT, BAE Systems, Lockheed-Martin, Harley-Davidson, and United Technologies.

Prior to consulting, Mr. Raheja worked at General Electric, Cooper Industries, and at Booz-Allen & Hamilton. He is the author of several books including Assurance Technologies Principles and Practices (Second Edition, Wiley 2006), and Design for Reliability (Wiley, 2012). A Fellow of the System Safety Society, he has a received Scientific Achievement Award and the Educator-of the-Year Award from the society.

Mr. Raheja serves on the Patient and Families Advisory Council at Johns Hopkins Hospital as a patient safety advocate. He is Associate Editor for Healthcare Safety for The Journal of System Safety and an Associate Professor at University of Maryland where he teaches the “Design For Reliability” course which includes design for safety and trustworthiness.

Maria C. Escano, M.D.

Dr. Maria C. Escano completed her medical degree at University of Miami School of Medicine. She received her post-graduate training at Columbia University/New York Presbyterian Hospital in New York City and St. Agnes Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland. She completed her advanced trauma surgery fellowship at R. Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center at the University of Maryland.

She has been a regular contributor to scholarly journals for many years and has presented across the country on various topics advocating systems and patient safety initiatives. Dr. Escano is also an extensive traveler, having forged friendships across six continents.

References

Kenen, Joanne. “Medical Errors Occur 10 Times More than Previously Thought,” AARP Bulletin, April 7, 2011.

Pronovost, P., and E. Vohr. Safe Patients, Smart Hospitals, Hudson Street Press, 2010.

Clancy, Carolyn. “What is Health Care Quality and Who Decides?” Testimony before the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance, Subcommittee on Health Care, March 18, 2009, http://archive.ahrq.gov/news/speech/test031809.html.

Healthcare

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Published

2014-02-01

How to Cite

Raheja, D., & Escano, M. (2014). System Safety in Healthcare: Curing the Risk Management Process in Hospitals. Journal of System Safety, 50(1), 9–11. Retrieved from https://jsystemsafety.com/index.php/jss/article/view/235

Issue

Vol. 50 No. 1 (2014): Catching Safety Problems at the Planning Stage

Section

Columns and Perspectives

Categories

License

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

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