This post was mentioned on Twitter by lybba: Radiation Hazards Illustrate Need For Industry-Wide Safety … http://bit.ly/bqxvKR…

I am delighted to see this post by Peter Pronovost. While at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, I had the pleasure of working with Peter to jumpstart a proof of concept phase that would apply lessons from aviation, specifically, CAST, to health care. I agree wholeheartedly with a system-wide approach, rather than a piecemeal and ineffective approach that we use today in health care, to make patient safety a reality.

While reading the NY Times article on radiation hazards, I couldn’t help but think of seeming similarities with the Toyota accelerator issue that has stunned drivers and the company, and the absence of a brake override system. Toyota has agreed to install a brake override system to provide a measure of confidence. But it took a recall of vehicles, under pressure from a federal regulatory agency, and the public spotlight, to do the recall and put in a fail-safe mechanism.

Meanwhile, the NYT article reported that people were “just stunned that a company could make technology that could administer that amount of radiation — that extreme amount of radiation — without some fail-safe mechanism.”

The harm from radiation requires a requisite response. What if the relevant companies were required to recall their equipment, and to cease selling them, until the problems are fixed?