A review of the Office of Inspector General's reports on adverse event identification and reporting

The Office of Inspector General published a series of four reports from 2008 to 2010 after investigating the frequency and financial impact of “never events” on Medicare recipients. This series investigated healthcare's ability to identify the occurrence of these events and yielded a detailed analysis of data that must, or at least should, be reviewed to fully understand the clinical risks affecting organizations. These reports also shed light on the reality that there remains gross underreporting of adverse events in healthcare and begs several questions about healthcare's current efforts to fully identify and understand risk. This article summarizes the reports and considers their risk management implications, particularly regarding adverse events.