Spencer L. Byrum

Spencer L. Byrum is a highly sought-after speaker, author and Chief Executive Officer of HRS Consulting, Inc., a premier human performance improvement company that was specifically created and designed to enhance individual and team decision making in high-risk industries. Mr. Byrum’s specialty is taking lessons learned in aviation and other dangerous occupations and developing innovative process improvements and training for professions in which people need to make critical decisions in a stressful, demanding environment.

Mr. Byrum is former Coast Guard rescue pilot, Head of Standardization and Training, and an internationally-know expert on the subject of human performance in challenging, time-critical environments. He has developed and delivered training to all US Combat Air Forces, Air National Guard, Air Force Reserve; multiple NATO Forces; domestic and international commercial airlines; commercial heavy construction crews; undergraduate and graduate university programs; FAA; BSEE; NASA Dryden Test Pilots, Project Engineers and Project Managers.

Since becoming integrally involved in healthcare almost 20 years ago, Mr. Byrum has worked with over 660 healthcare facilities ranging from major tertiary care centers to Ambulatory Surgery Centers to Critical Access Hospitals. He has spoken at more than 300 major national and international conferences about High Reliability, Human Factors, Safety and much more. He has developed tools for the quantitative and qualitative assessment of the processes associated with the HAIs, SSIs, H&Ps, Informed Consent, Surgical Time Out, Surgical Site Marking, Surgical Counts, Medication Errors, and other processes that have been implemented by some of the largest healthcare institutions and companies in the country. Mr. Byrum has developed and delivered training for over 100,000 participants on the Introduction of High Reliability Organization (HRO) Processes for staff and physicians, the Time Out, OR Burns, Elimination of Retained Surgical Items, Elimination of Look-Alike, Sound-Alike Medications, Patient Scheduling Optimization, and the Role of the Surgeon in Surgical Counts that have been utilized by hundreds of facilities across the US, Canada and Europe. He has developed a web-based safety culture survey tool that has assessed over 750,000 responses to questions about organizational safety and culture. His Intro to HROs and the Role of the Surgeon in the Surgical Count process are currently being used as requirements for credentialing surgeons in Texas. Mr. Byrum has deep experience in reviewing over 1,000,000 “near miss and sentinel events” and is an expert in evaluation of the causal factors and remediation of their impact. Finally, Mr. Byrum’s programs have been recognized by major insurers to reduce losses, leading to medical malpractice premium reductions for physicians and facility premium reductions for individual hospitals and related healthcare entities. Finally, Mr. Byrum is also the author of the highly acclaimed High Reliability for a Highly Unreliable World released on Amazon in January 2018.