Abstract: Human errors in healthcare socio-technical systems can be a serious
threat to patient safety. This study provides an integrated and systematic
framework for assessing and optimising service operations approaches (SOA)
that are effective in human errors reduction. For this, a pilot study was used to
test the combination of three methods for a complete process to help identify
ways to improve exposure to human error by selecting an optimal strategy.
Based on experts’ opinions, we performed a risk assessment using failure
modes and effects analysis for each human error and a risk priority number
(RPN) was assigned for each failure mode. Next, a house of quality approach
was applied to identify the impact that different SOAs may have on improving
human errors in healthcare. Ultimately, in order to select the optimal SOA, a
zero one goal programming model was used to consider simultaneously
resources limitations and the error reduction.