Radiology failure mode and effect analysis: what is it?

Proactive prevention of medical errors is critical in medical practice. Root cause analysis (RCA) is a conventional method used to deal with errors that result in an adverse event. However, RCA has several limitations. An analytic method for health care risk management, health care failure mode and effect analysis (FMEA), has been introduced relatively recently. Health care FMEA combines several existing analytic approaches into one simple tool with which to analyze a particular health care process, determine the risks associated with it, and develop corrective actions and outcome measures. The authors provide a brief history of health care FMEA, describe its validation process, and relate their experience with its use in a radiology department.