Joint Commission releases sentinel event stats through second quarter 2015

Editor's Note

Joint Commission data on 9,119 incidents reviewed from 2004 through the second quarter of 2015 show that 9,384 patients have been affected by adverse events, with 5,383 (57.4%) resulting in death, 847 (9%) in permanent loss of function, and 2,788 (29.6%) in unexpected additional care and/or psychological impact.

The most frequent of the top 10 reported events was wrong-patient, wrong-site, or wrong-procedure, followed by unintended retention of a foreign body. Sixth in line was operative/postoperative complications.

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