Summary: ECRI has acquired The Just Culture Company to integrate its cultural transformation expertise into ECRI’s Total System Safety (TSS) approach. This partnership aims to foster safer healthcare environments, reduce preventable harm, and address workforce burnout by shifting from reactive error evaluation to proactive system design and a fair, learning-based culture.
Key Takeaways:
- Proactive Safety Culture: ECRI’s integration of Just Culture aims to prevent harm through system design and fair accountability, moving away from “shame and blame.”
- Alignment with Industry Standards: Just Culture is essential for meeting the CMS Patient Safety Structural Measure, emphasizing cultural transformation in healthcare.
ECRI announced today it acquired The Just Culture Company, which specializes in transforming workforce culture in high-risk industries.
The Just Culture Company assists organizations in deploying a balanced system of accountability between the organization and employee that fosters a fair, learning culture – referred to as a “just culture” – by implementing its proprietary algorithm through advisory services, educational programs, and coaching.
Integrating Just Culture into ECRI’s Total System Safety Approach
ECRI says that “just culture” is an essential component of its Total System Safety (TSS) approach to drive efficiencies, improve healthcare, and reduce preventable patient harm by designing systems for impact and sustainability. Through the acquisition of The Just Culture Company, ECRI now operates an experienced cultural transformation organization.
“Alarming rates of preventable harm are inflicted on patients every day. By offering Just Culture programs throughout ECRI’s global network, we can prevent harm before it happens,” said Marcus Schabacker, PhD, president and CEO of ECRI. “To create lasting change and improve patient and workforce safety, we must shift from evaluating accidents and errors after they’ve taken place, to designing systems and cultures that prevent harm from happening in the first place.”
RELATED: St. Joseph’s Health Wins 2024 ECRI Safety Excellence Award
The Just Culture Model: A Systems-Based Approach
The Just Culture Company has partnered with healthcare providers, health departments, and insurers to assess and improve workforce culture, from C-Suite to frontline staff, through a holistic systems-based approach.
“Our just culture model is founded on the principle that workforce learning, holistic system design, mentoring, and coaching are stronger interventions than the ‘shame and blame’ culture that’s so prolific in healthcare,” said David Marx, CEO of The Just Culture Company. “Errors must be recognized and addressed in a way that becomes learning opportunities for all the people in the system.”
Just Culture and the 2025 CMS Patient Safety Measure
The significance of just culture in the healthcare workforce was highlighted in the CMS Patient Safety Structural Measure taking effect in 2025. The measure requires hospitals to demonstrate they have established a culture and structure that prioritizes patient safety, specifically referencing just culture in the domain of strategic planning and organizational policy.
“Too many healthcare staff, through no fault of their own, are operating in poorly designed systems, with hierarchical cultures that prevent staff from speaking up about safety hazards and ‘near misses,’” said Schabacker. “Not only does this lead to more incidents of patient harm, but it fuels high rates of burnout and stress among overworked healthcare personnel. We can’t train our way to improved safety and quality. Only through a cultural transformation can we adopt a completely new way of supporting and collaborating with our healthcare workforce.”
