Sociotechnical Factors Most Common Contributors to Health IT Sentinel Events

​Sentinel events that involve health information technology (IT) most often include sociotechnical factors (i.e., factors related to interactions among "technology, people, processes, organizations, and the external environment") among their contributing factors, according to a study in the February 2016 Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety. The authors reviewed more than 3,300 sentinel events reported to the Joint Commission between January 2010 and June 2013, concluding that 120 of them were related to health IT.