Quality, Safety, & High Reliability
Contact our teamQuality and safety break down when they live in siloed departments instead of the overall operating model.
For many health systems, effectively integrating quality and safety initiatives is a big challenge. Different priorities, processes, and accountability structures can create variation across the organization, making it harder to identify risk, standardize care, and sustain improvement.
Chartis helps build high reliability by connecting people, processes, and technology to create systems that perform consistently across every dimension of care.
High reliability starts with the operating model
High reliability is not a standalone initiative, but an operating model that aligns quality, safety, equity, operations, governance, and measurement across the enterprise. We work alongside health system leaders to identify where differences exist, prioritize opportunities for alignment, and build the structures needed to achieve reliable performance across clinical and non-clinical operations.
Our solutions
- High reliability assessment and roadmap: We partner with executive and clinical leaders to assess current capabilities across structure, process, people, and resources using nationally recognized high reliability models. We translate those findings into a practical roadmap that establishes governance, accountability, leadership development, data analytics, and operating priorities that support long-term reliability.
- Equity-informed high reliability: We work with organizations to embed health equity into quality, safety, and operational improvement rather than treating it as a separate initiative. By evaluating how equity is reflected in organizational structures, care processes, data, and performance measures, we help leaders identify gaps and integrate equity into everyday decision-making.
- Patient safety transformation: We help health systems strengthen the organizational capabilities that reduce preventable harm. Our work includes patient safety governance, peer review, credentialing and privileging, OPPE and FPPE processes, culture of safety, and organizational structures that improve accountability and support continuous learning.
- Clinical documentation improvement: We partner with clinical documentation and coding teams to ensure administrative data accurately reflects patient acuity, clinical complexity, and outcomes. A "coding for quality" approach moves beyond traditional CDI focused on MS-DRG Medicare populations to ensure data accuracy across all patients, payers, and care settings. This enables organizations to capture appropriate revenue while strengthening quality reporting, risk adjustment, reimbursement, and performance measurement.
- Ratings and rankings optimization: We help drive clinical care improvement by aligning quality, safety, operational, and financial priorities around the measures that have the greatest impact on CMS Star Ratings, Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade, Vizient, U.S. News & World Report, and other national performance programs. We help clients improve ratings and rankings by identifying the most impactful metrics, prioritizing recommendations, and executing a targeted improvement roadmap. Our team combines deep expertise, advanced analytics, and proven methodologies to deliver sustainable performance gains, stronger ratings outcomes, and ultimately, better patient care.
High reliability isn't a program that sits beside operations. It becomes the operating system that aligns quality, safety, equity, and accountability across the organization. ”
Frequently asked questions
What does high reliability mean in healthcare?
It means building a system of safety, not a collection of stand-alone improvement projects. The Institute for Healthcare Improvement frames high reliability around safe, reliable, and effective care, with a focus on culture, learning systems, and standardized processes.
What is the financial case for high reliability?
CMS ties quality performance to payment. Under the Hospital-Acquired Condition Reduction Program, hospitals above the 75th percentile of total HAC scores receive a 1% Medicare payment reduction, so safety performance is a direct margin issue, not just a clinical one.
Large health system
Our High Reliability Care leadership team worked with this large academic medical center to create and implement a high reliability care program encompassing the culture of safety throughout the entire organization.
Join us for our “Quality, Safety and High Reliability: Leading the Transformation” education solution.
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