Tampa General Hospital Advances High-Reliability Journey With First-of-Its-Kind Certification

The academic medical center at TGH Davis Islands builds on nationally recognized safety programs with a new certification milestone and a reliability management platform being developed with Palantir to help teams identify and address risk earlier.

Tampa, FL (Nov. 12, 2026) – Tampa General Hospital (TGH) has earned Collaborative High Reliability® Organization (CHRO) certification from SG Collaborative Solutions, LLC for its academic medical center at TGH Davis Islands, becoming the first organization to achieve the designation. The milestone advances Tampa General’s multiyear effort to build a culture of safety and the infrastructure to help teams identify, understand and proactively manage risk.

The certification evaluates the structure supporting Collaborative High Reliability at Tampa General’s academic medical center, bringing together its Collaborative Just Culture and Reliability Management Team programs with an emerging Reliability Management System (RMS). For patients and families, the goal is straightforward: help teams recognize potential problems earlier and act before those risks affect care.

“High reliability begins with a culture where people trust one another, feel safe speaking up, and understand that identifying risk is everyone’s responsibility,” said John Couris, president and CEO of Florida Health Sciences Center | Tampa General. “This milestone reflects our commitment to ensuring that culture is ingrained in how we work every day. By pairing the expertise of our team members and physicians with new ways to anticipate risk, we are building a stronger foundation for safe, reliable, world-class care.”

A key component of Tampa General’s next phase of high reliability is its emerging Reliability Management System (RMS). Building on standards and a framework structured with SG Collaborative Solutions, Tampa General is partnering with Palantir to develop the system’s analytical capabilities. Drawing conceptually on reliability practices used in aviation, RMS is designed to bring together information from organizational data sources and dashboards to help risk subject-matter experts monitor processes and assess emerging risks.

“Our next step is to connect the culture we have built with the infrastructure that helps us see and understand risk more clearly,” said Dr. Peggy Duggan, executive vice president, chief physician executive and chief medical officer of Florida Health Sciences Center. “The Reliability Management System represents an important evolution in that work, providing a framework to help our experts better understand where risk is emerging and where to focus our attention.”

“Data becomes meaningful when teams can use it to make better-informed decisions about where to focus their attention,” said Dr. Laura Haubner, senior vice president and chief quality officer at Tampa General. “As the Reliability Management System moves into use, evaluating how it performs will be a critical part of understanding how it supports our teams and advances safer, more reliable care.”

The new milestone builds on Tampa General’s earlier national firsts. In March 2023, Tampa General became the first academic medical center in the United States to receive qualifications for both its Collaborative Just Culture Program® and Reliability Management Team™.

According to K. Scott Griffith, founder and president of SG Collaborative Solutions, “The CHRO and CJCP certifications achieved by Tampa General Hospital represent the highest standards of reliability and safety available today, based on decades of development in high-consequence industries. Being the first to meet these standards places Tampa General Hospital at the forefront of evidence-based improvement in healthcare.”

Those qualifications recognized the programs and teams established to see, understand and manage risk and marked foundational steps toward CHRO certification.

In March 2024, University of South Florida Tampa General Physicians (USFTGP) became the first academic medical group in the nation to earn qualification for its Collaborative Just Culture Program®.

Following its initial qualifications, Tampa General successfully completed requalification, demonstrating the continued maturity and performance of its Collaborative Just Culture and Reliability Management Team programs. The CHRO certification takes a broader view of how these programs work together across the academic medical center, including the structure intended to support more predictive risk management.

Collaborative Just Culture supports safety and trust by balancing individual and organizational accountability and encouraging teams to identify and discuss risks. Reliability management provides a structured approach to understanding those risks and strengthening the processes that support consistent care. Together, these efforts reflect Tampa General’s ongoing commitment to learning, continuous improvement and building safety into the everyday work of its team members and physicians.