Cost-Benefit Decisions in Safety Assessments
Cost-benefit decisions in safety assessments in safety-critical industries: lessons for healthcare
Funded by the Health Foundation Insight research programme (2013 - 2014)
Overview
This project will identify and summarise the main arguments, accumulated knowledge and best practices from safety-critical industries over the decades in order to inform with these lessons the current discussion around cost and safety in healthcare.
Aims and Objectives:
To describe how cost-benefit decisions in safety assessments are made in safety-critical industries, and to identify lessons for healthcare.
The study objectives are:
- to identify and to describe regulatory requirements, guidelines and industry best practices that inform how cost-benefit decisions are made in safety assessment in safety critical industries
- to describe perceptions of stakeholders in the different industries on how such decisions are made in practice
- to derive possible lessons for healthcare.
The safety-critical industries that will be considered in this project are aviation, defence, nuclear, petrochemical and transportation.
Study Design
The project employs three instruments in order to achieve the respective objectives:
- Rapid, narrative literature reviews will be conducted for each industry by experts in the respective industry
- Semi-structured interviews will be conducted with participants from each industry (approx. 5 per industry), and will be analysed using thematic analysis
- A workshop will be held with healthcare stakeholders followed up by a Delphi process to stimulate discussion and to identify lessons that could be applicable to healthcare. The final report will reflect on applicability and limitations of these lessons in a health context.
Results
A project report will become available in the first half of 2015.
References
SUJAN, M. A., HABLI, I., KELLY, T. P., GÜHNEMANN, A., POZZI, S. & JOHNSON, C. W. 2017. How can health care organisations make and justify decisions about risk reduction? Lessons from a cross-industry review and a health care stakeholder consensus development process. Reliability Engineering & System Safety, 161, 1-11.
Project team
Mark Sujan (PI)
Matthew Cooke
Adelard: Prof Robin Bloomfield, Dr Nick Chozos
Deep Blue: Alberto Pasquini, Dr Simone Pozzi
Human Reliability: Dr David Embrey, Jamie Henderson
University of York: Dr Tim Kelly
University of Leeds: Dr John Nellthorp
University of Glasgow: Prof Chris Johnson
Karolinska Institute: Dr John Øvretveit