Abstract

Quality leaders can capitalize on emerging developments in aviation and healthcare to enhance an organization’s quality. Estimates of deaths from preventable medical errors range from 100,000 to 225,000 annually, according to various authoritative sources. This equates to 250 to 550 Boeing 747-300 airliner catastrophic accidents annually. Air travel in the United States is the safest in the world, and even at its current low rate of commercial aviation fatalities, which is much lower than the error rate in the healthcare industry, the intent is to reduce fatalities even further through a change in approach. Aviation has contributed methods to improve healthcare safety such as Crew Resource Management. Recent developments in aviation system safety could offer additional methods not only to reduce medical errors, but also to provide new tools to enhance the value of quality in other industries.