Sentinel event frequency was stagnant between 2012 and 2013, according to an analysis of sentinel events between 2004 and 2013 released by The Joint Commission.
In 2012 TJC recorded 901 sentinel events. The number of sentinel events was down only slightly in 2013, at 887 events, with a similar frequency and distribution to the previous year of events across all categories.
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Between 2004 and 2013, 66 percent of all sentinel events occurred in a hospital setting, while ambulatory care settings contributed 4 percent of sentinel events, and emergency departments contributed nearly 6 percent of events. Approximately 60 percent of the total events reported resulted in patient death, while 9.5 percent resulted in a loss of patient function.
Delay in treatment (12.7 percent) continued to be the most common sentinel event reported, followed closely by wrong-patient, wrong-site wrong-procedure errors (12.3 percent) and unintended retention of a foreign body (11.5 percent), similar to 2012.
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