SEPTEMBER 15, 2020—DALLAS, TX—(BUSINESS WIRE)—TractManager, the leader in strategic sourcing, contract lifecycle management, and provider management, today announced the public release of a white paper that demonstrates how healthcare organizations can deliver higher-quality care, and remain financially viable by creating innovations in policy and process that are the hallmarks of what are known as Highly Reliable Organizations. These are organizations that successfully avoid catastrophe, despite a high level of operational risk and complexity.

The white paper, Toward a High Reliability Organization: Predictable, Transparent Decision-Making for Modern Health Systems, was created by Mark Kestner, MD, Chief Medical Officer. Medical error is the third-leading cause of death in the U.S., Kestner points out, but a report by the Institute of Medicine’s Committee on the Quality of Health Care in America concluded that most medical errors result from faulty systems and processes—not individuals. The way to repair those faulty processes and reduce errors is through operational optimization, Kestner writes, and this requires “an appropriate combination of supporting technologies, evidence sources, and team collaboration.”

The paper goes on to describe the five attributes of highly reliable organizations and provides a case study describing how the decisions in one large health system were fragmented among many departments. By adopting a flexible, cross-departmental decision-making framework and adhering to the concepts of high reliability — standardization, team focus, and flexibility — the system was able to develop a more consolidated and collaborative decision-making process aligned to its size and growth.

“As we transition to a value-based care model,” says Kestner, “quality measurement and reporting will be required for reimbursement. But beyond concerns of reimbursement, becoming a highly reliable organization promotes movement toward zero patient harm, which is ultimately the real driving force behind any quality initiative.”

Healthcare executives are invited to download the white paper. In addition to the white paper, TractManager will publish a series of monthly blogs to help healthcare organizations improve their financial health by taking advantage of the wealth of information hidden in the data they already possess. The blog series is available on tractmanager.com throughout the remainder of 2020.