Overheard talking about the National Quality Forum

The National Quality Forum is mulling a change of the definition of serious reportable event (SRE) and although the change is only involves one word, that word could truly effect the intent of the term. Currently the definition is “preventable, serious, and unambiguous adverse events that should never occur.” The proposed change would replace the word “never” to “not”… The committee is hoping that by dropping the “never” from the definition, more harmful events could be included into what is reported by hospitals, leading to further quality improvement. Heather Comak, NQF considers change of ’serious reportable event’ definition

Today’s WhatIs.com Word of the Day is National Quality Forum (NQF).

There are six defined categories for SREs:

•    Surgical (for example, an instrument left in a patient)
•    Product or device (for example, a malfunctioning respirator)
•    Patient protection (for example, a baby is discharged to the wrong person)
•    Care management (for example, the patient receives the wrong medication)
•    Environment  (for example, the patient falls in a health care facility)
•    Criminal event (for example, the sexual assault of a patient)