In a recent year of data from The Joint Commission, over 65% of the reported sentinel events for led to the death of the patient. If the patient can’t get a timely colonoscopy, it can lead to delay of discovery and resection of a cancerous polyp. The risk to patient safety is the delayed treatment can lead to a delayed diagnosis. They also include situations where a patient can’t get an initial or follow-up appointment with a physician or specialist that was ordered by a physician. This could be administration of medication collecting, processing, or reporting a lab sample performing or interpreting a radiology scan or implementing therapy.ĭelays in treatment, though, go beyond these obvious missed marks. The Joint Commission defines the delay in treatment is occurring when a patient doesn’t receive the treatment that was ordered for them in the timeframe that was supposed to be delivered. So, let’s get back to the issue of delay in treatment. In other words, it’s through education and robust policies and procedures that nurses, therapists, techs, physicians, surgeons, and other healthcare providers improve patient safety. From that experience, I know that when an accrediting organization highlights sentinel events, it gets the attention of hospital leaders.Īs a medical malpractice attorney, I believe that hospital leaders are implementing education throughout the healthcare workforce to make sure that the lessons learned from sentinel events are actually learned. One of my responsibilities in that position was hospital compliance officer for accreditation surveys by The Joint Commission. That’s why sentinel events are often also called never events.īefore my legal career, I was a hospital administrator. The concept of sentinel events was created by healthcare improvement professionals to focus the industry and the goal of having zero harm in health care. Number four on the list was delay in treatment. The healthcare accrediting agency The Joint Commission recently announced the top 10 sentinel events reported by accredited hospitals or certified hospitals and healthcare organizations in 2020.
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