(Juran: Southbury, Connecticut) -- A growing trend among hospitals is the use of lean techniques to improve patient safety measures, in turn improving the overall quality of care. Juran Healthcare’s patient safety model incorporates the Juran Trilogy (safety planning, safety compliance, and breakthrough improvement) to comprehensively create a strong culture of safety, improved human performance, and process reliability to reduce medical errors and improve safety.

To improve patient-safety culture, organizations can conduct patient-safety culture assessments. These include surveys, behavior-based observations, executive and staff interviews, and incident-reporting analysis. Behavior-based observations provide the cornerstone of human performance improvement and sustainability through the implementation of leadership and coaching programs. Executive and staff interviews provide feedback and illuminate safety issues. Finally, incident-reporting-system analysis identifies key system issues and process breakdowns that are the potential root causes of serious safety events for the organization.

 …