Root Cause Analysis in Health Care: Tools and Techniques, Fifth Edition

When a serious patient safety event (such as a sentinel event) occurs, it is critical for the health care organization to understand the system failures or defects that contributed to that event. Root cause analysis (RCA) provides a systematic approach to identifying those contributing factors. RCA is also beneficial as a proactive tool to identify potential safety problems before they reach the patient. RCA is an effective tool that can help health care organizations that have experienced a patient safety event, as well as those working to improve their patient safety systems or achieve high reliability, to do the following: Ensure reliable processes Decrease variation and defects (waste) Achieve better outcomes Use evidence to ensure that a service is satisfactory New for 2015, Root Cause Analysis in Health Care: Tools and Techniques, 5th ed., updates the bestselling fourth edition. The book provides a framework for conducting an effective RCA, both proactively and as a response to a sentinel event. The fifth edition reflects recent revisions to Joint Commission standards and the Sentinel Event Policy, and includes a wealth of new tools and case studies. A new appendix to the fifth edition discusses alternative methods of comprehensive systematic analysis, including common cause analysis, human factors analysis, and others.