The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) recently announced that Coatesville VA Medical Center (VAMC) Pharmacy received the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) National HeRO Award for its contributions to VHA's Journey to High Reliability. The award was presented during a virtual ceremony on March 5. Dr. Richard Stone, acting under-secretary for health, was the keynote speaker during the event recognizing nine total individuals and teams.

VHA's enterprise-wide Journey to High Reliability aims to continuously improve VHA's processes by maximizing patient safety and reducing harm to restore trust and ensure every veteran receives high-quality care.

The 16-staff-member Coatesville VAMC Pharmacy team was recognized for its safety initiatives and COVID-19 response efforts to provide the best possible care to veterans. The team's accomplishments include reimagining processes and protocols to adapt to the COVID-19 environment when Pennsylvania's initial stay-at-home order was announced in 2020.

More than 6,600 veterans - those who had selected the option to pick up their prescriptions in person rather than to receive them by mail - lost the ability to refill their medications at the beginning of the pandemic. The pharmacy team recognized the serious potential impacts the stay-at-home order would have on the newly isolated veterans and developed a plan to contact every veteran on the list. Starting with those over age 65, veterans were offered the opportunity to switch to mail-order prescriptions.

The pharmacy team was recognized for demonstrating VHA's high reliability organization (HRO) principle Preoccupation with Failure: Anticipate Risk - Every Staff Member Is a Problem Solver when it anticipated the risk the stay-at-home order would have on the veterans it serves and then quickly implemented its solution.

Because of the team's effort, prescriptions delivered by mail increased from 63% to 83% of all prescriptions issued. Additionally, there were no instances of veterans without medication and no reported medication errors.

The National HeRO Award is the highest level of HRO recognition available within VHA. It honors employees who advance VHA's Journey to High Reliability through demonstration of VHA's HRO Principles in Action. In addition to Preoccupation with Failure, these principles include Sensitivity to Operations: Focus on Front Line Staff and Care Processes; Reluctance to Simplify: Get to the Root Causes; Commitment to Resilience: Bounce Back From Mistakes; and Deference to Expertise: Empower and Value Expertise and Diversity. The HRO Steering Committee votes quarterly to select one recipient in each category for a National HeRO Award.

Learn more about VA's Journey to High Reliability by visiting http://www.patientsafety.va.gov/features/ and selecting "VHA's HRO journey officially begins."