The Joint Commission (JC) recently released several reports on sentinel events (SE), summarizing events reported to JC from 1995 until June 2013. Concentrating on the most recent data, the most common type of event was wrong-patient/wrong-site/wrong procedure, followed closely by unintended retention of a foreign body in surgical or procedural patients. Delay in treatment, falls and suicides were also noted. The frequency of SEs peaked in 2011 with 1243; 446 have been reported this calendar year. It should be noted that this data is not necessarily correlated to actual rates of SE; only those known by JC. 67% of events are self-reported by health care organizations, likely with a bias towards reporting more significant events.

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