Enhancing the Value of Root Cause Analysis Using PROACT® Knowledge Management Templates™.
Available in addition to your purchase of the PROACT^® ERM System

What is Knowledge Management?
Read the Article: Pre-Existing Logic by Robert J. Latino

PROACT Templates:

Reliability Center, Inc. (RCI) has developed a series of time saving healthcare templates. This new product is the PROACT® Logic Tree Knowledge Management Templates that have been developed from completed analyses conducted in hospitals nationwide. These unique one-of-kind PROACT® Logic Trees are comprised of events that have happened in numerous clinical settings across all departments and include decades of researched clinical experience.

 

The templates database houses completed logic trees that are each drilled down to the REAL root causes of the undesirable events. While RCA templates alone cannot provide a list with all answers (that is simply not possible), they do provide analysts with a number of different avenues to explore in order to broaden the scope of possibilities that could have caused the undesirable outcome.

See an Example Template

Conducting a Root Cause Analysis (RCA) can be a frustrating and time consuming task, yet it is invaluable to the cause of preventing recurrence of undesirable outcomes potentially affecting worker safety in an adverse way. Oftentimes the source of such frustration is the time pressure to complete a comprehensive RCA. The more time pressure to complete the RCA, the more short cuts analysts are likely to take to uncover all the root causes .Another issue companies are facing today is not effectively capturing critical workforce knowledge and experience from older employees facing retirement, and few organizations are transferring that knowledge to newer and less experienced employees.

The key to optimizing the value of the templates is to use them as supplemental knowledge to the team. If the templates are used as the primary knowledge base for analyses, then there is a potential for the learning process to be cut short. The analysis team should always be encouraged to first conduct their own investigation, capitalizing on their own knowledge and experience. After all hypotheses have been exhausted by the team, then the PROACT® Logic Tree Knowledge Management Templates™ do what they were designed to do; uncover more possible causes that the team may have overlooked.

By using the PROACT® templates the analysis team can:

• Validate team hypotheses
• Broaden considerations
• Identify team biases
• Illuminate frequently overlooked organizational factors (people, policy and management decisions)
• Capitalize on past experience and leverage it on future analyses
• Quickly drill down through the levels of detail necessary to get to the REAL root cause
• Quickly search the RCA template database using carefully developed key words, phrases and/or the table of contents
• Quickly reference multi-levels of detail to uncover the cause-and-effect relationships seen when analyzing the undesirable outcomes

 

Template FAQ What are the Templates? The Templates are individual logic trees that can be searched and called upon for use in the PROACT RCA software program. How do the Templates Work? After all hypotheses have been exhausted from the team, then the Templates can be searched using “key word searches” to see if there are other suggestions from past analyses that our team may not have thought of. How do I learn to use the Templates? RCI requires that anyone purchasing the Templates attend a 1-day training class on the proper use and navigation of the Templates to conduct a root cause analysis. Will there be more Templates forthcoming? Absolutely. Reliability Center, Inc. (RCI) plans on continuing our Research & Development (R&D) efforts towards providing additional series of templates with even more breadth, depth and enhanced features.

Effective Time Reduction with End Results: Conducting a Root Cause Analysis (RCA) can be a frustrating and time consuming task, yet it is invaluable to the cause of preventing recurrence of undesirable outcomes potentially affecting patient safety in an adverse way. Oftentimes the source of such frustration is the time pressure to complete a comprehensive RCA. The more time pressure to complete the RCA, the more short cuts analysts are likely to take to uncover all the root causes.   The PROACT® Logic Tree Knowledge Management Templates are flexible enough to adapt to whichever RCA process the team is currently using (i.e. form-based, fishbone diagram, 5-whys, logic tree). RCI's PROACT® Templates can determinately help your organization save time and reduce the RCA process uncertainties. The end result is that analyses can be completed in a much more cost effective, efficient manner while at the same time being as inclusive as possible in the results uncovered.