ABSTRACT
Healthcare needs to become more reliable and will be when the concepts in this book are in place, as they are in organizations that have achieved reliable outcomes. But, what is this term High Reliability healthcare is using and what does it mean to become a High Reliability Organization? When I first joined healthcare, I was surprised to hear the term high reliability. Adding the adjective high to describe reliability is redundant. Either we have reliability or we do not. Granted, one system could be more reliable than another, but who is to say what is “high”? Is the reliability in aviation higher than the reliability in aerospace? That is like asking if the food in California is fresher than the food in Florida. The question cannot be answered, and thus it does not make any sense to even ask it. Adding high in front of reliability is popular, especially in healthcare. Used in our flexible definition, the adjective high might be used as a modifier of expected, for example, better performance to expectations. Better compared to what, though? Is high really needed to describe
organizations that achieve reliability or a longer duration of the expected outcome? Maybe longer is not better.
