How long does a facility keep major incident reports?

The retention period for major incident reports is typically set at two years, which is aligned with many regulatory and best practice guidelines in healthcare and safety management. Keeping these records for this duration allows facilities to review incidents thoroughly, evaluate any patterns that may arise, and implement necessary changes or improvements in policies and procedures.

This timeframe is also considered sufficient to ensure that any implicated staff can be retrained or corrected based on reported incidents, while also providing enough data for audits or reviews by regulatory bodies. Two years strikes a balance between maintaining relevant data for continual improvement and not holding onto documents for unnecessarily long periods that could lead to clutter or storage issues. Thus, the two-year retention policy helps facilitate effective oversight while supporting safety and quality assurance initiatives in healthcare facilities.