Issue link: https://beckershealthcare.uberflip.com/i/824946
10 PATIENT SAFETY Joint Commission: 10 Most Common Sentinel Events of 2016 By Heather Punke T he 10 most common sentinel events reviewed by the Joint Commission did not change much from 2015 to 2016 — only dialysis-related events and perinatal death/injury fell off the list completely, and medication errors and criminal events took their places. e Joint Commission did review fewer sentinel events in 2016 than 2015 — 824 last year compared to 936 in 2015. Unintended retention of a foreign body remained the most common patient harm event that occurred in hospitals, ambulatory care settings and other care locations for the third year running, according to the Joint Commission's sentinel event data summary released earlier in March. e top 10 sentinel events that occurred in 2016 are as follows: 1. Unintended retention of a foreign body — 120 reported 2. Wrong-patient, wrong-site, wrong-procedure — 104 3. Fall — 92 4. Suicide — 87 5. Unassigned (category unassigned at time of report) — 70 6. Delay in treatment — 54 7. Other unanticipated event (including asphyxiation, burn, choked on food, drowned or found unresponsive) — 47 8. Operative/post-operative complication — 45 9. Medication error — 33 10. Criminal event — 32 n Study: What Are the Risk Factors for SSIs Among Colon Cancer Patients? By Anuja Vaidya A study, published in JAMA Surgery, examined risk factors for surgical site infections among colon cancer patients. Boston-based Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School researchers conducted the retrospective cohort study. Researchers studied 1,481 patients who underwent colon cancer surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital, from 2004 through 2014. Of the patients, 90 developed SSIs. • SSI rates were significantly higher among the following: • People who smoked (7.4 percent versus 4.8 percent among non-smokers) • People who abused alcohol (10.6 percent versus 5.7 percent among non-alcoholics) • People with type 2 diabetics (8.8 percent versus 5.5 percent among people without type 2 diabetes) • Obese patients (11.7 percent versus 4 percent among non-obese people) • Patients with an operation duration longer than 140 minutes (7.5 percent versus 5 percent among people with shorter operation times) • Patients who underwent nonlaparoscopic approaches (6.7 percent versus 4.1 percent among laparoscopic approach patients) n Leapfrog Releases Calculator to Measure Lives, Money Lost to Medical Errors By Brian Zimmerman T he Leapfrog Group — a national nonprofit organiza- tion committed to improving the quality and safety of healthcare — released a new Lives and Dollars Lost to Medical Errors Calculator to shed light on the significant im- pact medical errors have on the hospital's bottom line and patient population. The new tool is essentially an enhanced version of the non- profit's Hidden Surcharge Calculator launched in 2013. "When we launched the calculator in 2013, our goal was to expose the hidden surcharges associated with medi- cal errors. Though they aren't indicated as a line item on a bill, employers and purchasers are certainly paying for them," said Leah Binder, president and CEO of Leapfrog. "Since introducing the calculator, we're now able to tabulate an even more important estimate of the price purchasers pay — the estimated number of lives that are lost amongst their covered population." The new calculator incorporates findings from a collaborative analysis conducted by Leapfrog and the Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality at Johns Hopkins Medicine in Baltimore. The analysis revealed hospitals with D or f grades from Leapfrog's safety grades carried a patient mortality rate 50 percent higher than hospitals that received an A grade. Visit www.leapfroggroup.org/employers-purchasers/ lives-dollars-lost-calculator to access the calculator. n