Paging through the May 2013 Consumer Report, a small article on page 11 titled “U.S. hospitals still not safe” caught my attention. The article explained how more hospitals are required to track and report safety data, and it provided a summary and a few rankings based on a 100-point scale. The average score was 49; highest 72 and the lowest mentioned 14. Also mentioned was teaching hospitals, “which are supposed to prepare future doctors” are lagging.
I’m not a health care professional and understand a comparison between aviation services and hospitals regarding safety, quality, and risk management is perhaps not an easy or even fair comparison. But the article did prompt me to think these two industries share some similarities; both have risk; both have high consequences when something goes wrong; both are highly regulated. Would you be satisfied using an aviation maintenance provider that scored below average on a safety or compliance audit? Are we satisfied attending maintenance training or flight schools (which are supposed to prepare future AMTs and pilots) knowing these teaching institutions score below average? Of course not.
The aviation industry has been collecting safety, quality, and risk management data for a long time. Internal company organizations are routinely ranked using this data, and service providers selected based in part on safety performance, audit and inspection rankings, safety program data, dispatch reliability, human error tracking, and more.
It’s been my experience that scoring half on an audit, inspection, or risk assessment would sound the alarms. When aircraft dispatch reliability drops down to 90 percent owners, passengers, and customers become highly upset, and everyone involved works toward a comprehensive fix. We all should be proud to be part of an industry that routinely scores near 100 percent in safety and quality.
