Radiology Safety Issues Added to Serious Reportable Events

The National Quality Forum (NQF) and Joint Commission added two new radiology safety issues to their lists of serious reportable events (SREs), or sentinel events (SEs). The newly added events are:

• Patient harm associated with an MRI-related thermal injury
• Delivery of radiotherapy to the wrong patient, wrong body region, an unintended procedure, or greater than 25% above the planned dose (regardless of outcome)

NQF and the Joint Commission also announced they will align these lists moving forward. The SRE and SE lists are used in the public reporting of patient safety events. The alignment of these two lists is intended to streamline the measurement and tracking of safety events for clinicians, hospitals and health systems, and to eliminate the need for maintaining separate, duplicative safety measurement frameworks. The Joint Commission will host a webinar March 25, 1-2pm ET, to provide an overview of the alignment process.

If you have questions about the SRE/SE lists, contact Zach Smith, ACR Senior Quality Programs Specialist.