High-Reliability Healthcare: Improving Patient Safety and Outcomes with Six Sigma, Second Edition

Student Resources (click here for access)
Instructor Resources: Instructor's Manual with cases, simulator exercises, presentation notes, PowerPoint slides and student resources


High-Reliability Organizations prioritize safety over other performance measures and equip staff with operational tactics to help them anticipate potential problems early on and respond to threats. Driven by the desire to improve, healthcare providers have recognized that the principles and approaches of High-Reliability Organizations have much to offer them in meeting important goals related to outcomes and safety.

High-Reliability Healthcare: Improving Patient Safety and Outcomes with Six Sigma explores how the Six Sigma approach to quality improvement integrates with and complements the culture of High-Reliability Organizations. Six Sigma strives to reduce variability both by reducing errors and by standardizing processes, and it provides the ground-up support structure for a High-Reliability culture. Written in a practical, how-to style and now extensively revised, this book provides healthcare executives with a tool kit for understanding variability, managing change, and ultimately reducing errors and improving patient outcomes.

This edition includes:
Expanded content on Lean operations, including scheduling with and without queuing In-depth guidance on error reduction Strategies for managing inevitable interruptions Workflow-design strategies, with more emphasis on Lean Advice on technological change, including what senior managers need to consider when adapting computer systems Additional cases to support the book's in-depth explanations and methods Expanded coverage of data visualization A significantly revised chapter on change management


A companion website provides spreadsheets in Excel 2016 format with the data required to work the book's cases. The website also provides sample spreadsheets that show the application of the statistical functions used in the book, complete solutions for indicative cases, PowerPoint templates for case reports, a complete analysis of examples not carried to completion in the book, and an Excel icebreaker tutorial.