Joint Commission releases new sentinel event stats

Editor's Note

The Joint Commission on August 14 released new sentinel event statistics for the first half of 2019.

The latest data also introduce new categories for describing sentinel events, including suicide-related events, surgical or invasive procedure events, anesthesia-related events, and product or device events.

The top five most frequently reported in the first half of 2019 were:

• unintended retention of foreign body (60)
• wrong-site surgery (29)
• falls (25)
• suicide−inpatient (21)
• suicide−offsite (21).

A total of 436 sentinel events were reported. The majority (83%) were voluntarily self-reported by accredited or certified organizations.