Resource Library-Industry Insight: Managing the Tides: Navigating Our Way to High Reliability

Video Transcription

Video Summary

The webinar, “Managing the Tide: Navigating Our Way to High Reliability,” features leaders from Tidelands Health describing their multi-year journey toward becoming a high-reliability organization. They explain that early on, safety and quality processes were fragmented across two formerly competing hospitals, relying on disconnected Word/Excel tracking and paper binders—making investigations and regulatory requests slow and chaotic. A key turning point was adopting high-reliability principles (leadership commitment, a strong safety culture, and robust process improvement) and shifting focus to identifying near misses and precursors to prevent serious safety events.<br /><br />Tidelands implemented an integrated technology platform (Verge Health) linking event reporting, accreditation, rounding, claims, patient relations, peer review, credentialing, and PSO functions. They created structured weekly review meetings: a Tuesday multidisciplinary team reviews all events and complaints from the prior week, while a Wednesday physician-led group escalates serious or potentially serious events to peer review or root cause analyses. This structure, combined with Lean/A3 process improvement and extensive Just Culture training, helped increase reporting dramatically (from ~75 to ~485 reports/month) and improved staff perceptions of non-punitive reporting (from 23% to 59%, reaching the 90th percentile). Near-miss reporting rose well beyond goals, and serious safety event rates declined substantially.<br /><br />Looking ahead, they identify major gaps: improving safety in ambulatory settings, addressing health equity and disparities through stratified data, increasing transparency with both staff and the public, expanding harm measurement to include emotional and financial harm, and advancing data analytics and surveillance to detect unreported risks. They conclude that embracing “storms” (errors and failures) and learning from them is central to sustained reliability.

Asset Caption

Speakers: Greg Nobles, Laura Sousa, Chris Rees

The path to high reliability is like swimming in the ocean and trying to get back to shore. When the tide is coming in it is easy, the waves help push you toward the shore and to your destination. If the tide is going out it is much harder, the waves work against you pulling your feet out from under you. Occasionally a rip tide comes along dragging you out to sea and off course.

This presentation will detail the high reliability voyage of Tidelands Health, a three-hospital health system with over 200 providers and 1,800 employees on the coast of South Carolina. There will be an overview of where they started, where they are now, and where they want to be in the future. Along the way there will be discussion on how Verge’s products helped Tidelands Health stay on course when the tides were falling and avoid rip tides all together.

A complimentary webinar for members, this activity was sponsored by Verge/Tidelands Health.

Meta Tag

Competency Tag PS1

Competency Tag Description Assess the organization’s safety culture and safety practices

Domain Tag Patient Safety

Keywords

PS1

Assess the organization’s safety culture and safety practices

Patient Safety

high reliability organization

Just Culture training

near miss reporting

serious safety events

root cause analysis

Lean A3 process improvement

integrated risk management platform

event reporting and incident management

Tidelands Health

Verge Health