As part of the developmental stages of improving health services in the private sector, the Ministry of Health (MOH) stipulated that all the private hospitals be registered in “Sentinel Events” programs, which is one of the requirements of licensing, renewing, or continuing in service for the private sectors' hospitals.
According to a circular released by His Excellency the Deputy Minister for Planning and Development, Dr. Mohammad bin Hamza Khushaim, to all the health affairs general directorates throughout the regions and governorates, MOH has affirmed the imperativeness of urging all the private sector hospitals to record all the serious events in MOH’s new program: “Sentinel Events”. Additionally, the circular included notifying these hospitals to receive their own usernames and passwords, and assuring of recording any serious event taking place within 48 hours.
On the other hand, such a measure comes within the framework of the strenuous efforts exerted by MOH to improve and upgrade the health services provided to the patients and out of its effective role with regard to maintaining their health and safety, identifying the causes of accidents, and upgrading the preventive measures so as to prevent their recurrence again.
It is noteworthy that MOH has completed recently including all its hospitals in this program, whereby all hospitals have to report and record each event upon its occurrence. In the meantime, MOH defined the “Sentinel Event” as this unexpected one which leads to the death or even the physical or mental injury of a patient, or patients have nothing to do with the natural course of the disease.
Further, this program is to contribute to recording the serious events, help to set an analysis for their original causes, and upgrade the preventive measures, which prevent the recurrence of the event or its causes.
Furthermore, it is worthwhile to mention that the system of monitoring and controlling the serious errors dubbed: “Sentinel Events” is an electronic system which records the event on the screen from the hospital directly. Then, it appears before MOH’s officials, hence referring to the hospital. This is in order to identify the serious errors which have occurred, as it is known, such as errors in administering blood transfusion or conducting surgery in the wrong place or on the wrong patient, among others.