Familiar Problems Persist: Joint Commission Releases Updated Sentinel Event Statistics

​The Joint Commission has released a Sentinel Event Data Summary providing sentinel event statistics for the first half of 2016. As detailed in the organization's Most Commonly Reviewed Sentinel Event Types, some familiar events continue to present challenges for hospitals. Of the 439 incidents reported between January 1, 2016, and June 30, 2016, the most frequent were falls and unintended retention of a foreign body (52 events each); wrong-patient, wrong-site, or wrong-procedure surgery (47); patient suicide (44); and delay in treatment (28). Of the 9,922 total events reported since the beginning of 2005, 54.4% have resulted in patient death.