TJC, NQF Align Sentinel Events And Serious Reportable Events Lists

To streamline safety event reporting and reduce confusion and burden, The Joint Commission and the National Quality Forum announced they are aligning TJC’s Sentinel Event List and the NQF’s Serious Reportable Events List. Both lists serve as tools for publicly reporting patient safety events.

Beginning Jan. 1, 2027, TJC will adopt the NQF’s updated SRE List as part of the SE List. This will allow accredited organizations to make required changes during this transition.

“Aligning Patient Safety Event Reporting” is a report published by the two organizations, detailing updates and including specific application guidance to enable more standardized implementation and thereby, allow meaningful comparisons across states, systems and even countries. A crosswalk of the SREs and the corresponding SEs is available to help health care organizations prepare for the transition.

To ensure workplace safety remains a priority, three workplace safety events from the legacy SE List — homicide, sexual abuse/assault and physical assault of a staff member — will be retained.

TJC and the NQF will host a patient safety capstone webinar that will cover the updates to SREs from noon to 1:15 p.m. Tuesday, March 3.