Last Saturday evening, a downed electrical wire sparked a brush fire behind the South Chapman Building and gym on GBMC’s main campus. Thanks to the rapid response of our team and the Baltimore County Fire Department, the fire was quickly contained, and—most importantly—no one was hurt. While we are grateful that no buildings were damaged, the event did cause a disruption: the fire took down internet and telephone lines serving our offsite locations, impacting Gilchrist and GBMC Health Partners offices.
In the immediate aftermath, our teams worked diligently to ensure patient care remained uninterrupted. Leaders including Cate O’Connor-Devlin, Jim Keyzer, Mitch Scholtes, and Jason Cole (among others) were instrumental in coordinating efforts, and staff at our offsite locations followed downtime procedures with professionalism and adaptability. I’m proud of our people for moving swiftly and effectively in the face of this challenge.
But as a high reliability organization, we must always take the next step: not just responding to failure but learning from it. The fire highlighted a vulnerability in our system—a single point of failure in our network redundancy. As we worked to restore service, we also asked ourselves: How can we prevent this from happening again? What other risks might exist that we haven’t yet identified?
This is the essence of preoccupation with failure, a fundamental principle of high reliability. It means constantly scanning for weaknesses, anticipating problems before they arise, and taking action to mitigate risks before they become crises. Instead of assuming everything will work as expected, we assume the opposite—that failure is always a possibility—and we plan accordingly.
Other industries, like aviation and nuclear power, have long embraced this mindset. Pilots don’t assume their instruments will always function correctly; they have backup systems and checklists to catch potential failures before they become catastrophic. In healthcare, this same approach applies to patient safety, equipment reliability, and, as we’ve now seen, our communication infrastructure.
The fire was a wake-up call—not a failure, but an opportunity to strengthen our systems. We are assessing both our electrical and network redundancies, identifying gaps, and will be working to implement solutions that ensure uninterrupted service for our patients and staff.
To everyone who responded to this event, thank you for your quick thinking and commitment to our mission. And to all of us at GBMC, let’s use this as a moment to reinforce our culture of high reliability. The best way to prevent future failures is to anticipate them before they happen.
If you have ideas or observations on how we can improve, I encourage you to share them. Our collective mindfulness is what keeps GBMC strong and prepared for whatever comes next.
In further recognition...
As we reflect on lessons in high reliability, we also take time to recognize the incredible work of our teams across the system. March brings opportunities to celebrate those who make GBMC HealthCare stronger every day: our social workers, who connect patients with vital resources; our hospitalists, who provide 24/7 inpatient care; our food and nutrition team, who support the dietary foundations of health; our lactation consultants, who assist mothers and babies; our colorectal and gastroenterology specialists, who work to prevent and treat colorectal cancer; and our child-life professionals, who ease fear and anxiety for pediatric patients.
Thank you all for providing the care we would want for our own loved ones!
