The impact of surgical count technology on retained surgical items rates in the Veterans Health Administration. | PSNet

The impact of surgical count technology on retained surgical items rates in the Veterans Health Administration. | PSNet

The impact of surgical count technology on retained surgical items rates in the Veterans Health Administration.

Gunnar W, Soncrant C, Lynn MM, et al. J Patient Saf. 2020

Retained surgical items (RSI) are considered ‘never events’ but continue to occur. In this study, researchers compared the RSI rate in Veterans Health (VA) surgery programs with (n=46) and without (n=91) surgical count technology and analyzed the resulting root cause analyses (RCA) for these events. The RSI rate was significantly higher in for the programs with surgical count technology compared to the programs without (1/18,221 vs. 1/30,593). Analysis of RCAs found the majority of incidents (64%) involved human factors issues (e.g., staffing changes during shifts, staff fatigue), policy/procedure failures (e.g., failure to perform methodical wound sweep) or communication errors.