Over the most recent 18 months of reporting \u2014 from July 2024 through December 2025 \u2014 UT Southwestern Medical Center reported 19 \u201cnever events.\u201d<\/a> That included 18 reports of objects left in a patient after surgery. That\u2019s an average of one unintentionally retained object per month.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n UT Southwestern spokesperson Russell Rian did not respond to repeated requests for an interview with a representative of the medical center. He did send an emailed comment about the medical center\u2019s retained object reports.<\/p>\n \u201cUT Southwestern considers patient safety of paramount concern,\u201d Rian wrote. The comment then explained UT Southwestern\u2019s reporting process \u2014 which it believes is more expansive than other institutions\u2019 \u2014 and whittled down the reported number to account for mistaken reports.<\/p>\n Retained objects \u2014 when a surgical team accidentally leaves behind<\/a> a sponge or an instrument or another surgical item \u2014 are in a category of errors sometimes referred to as \u201cnever events.\u201d Surgical never events, including retained object as well as wrong site, wrong surgery and wrong patient errors, were the focus of a months-long investigation <\/a>from The Dallas Morning News, which looked into why these errors happen<\/a> and how patients fare after the fact.<\/p>\n That investigation<\/a> included analysis of state data on \u201cpreventable adverse events<\/a>,\u201d which includes these four surgical never events.<\/p>\n Of the Texas facilities that filed reports, UT Southwestern had the highest number of surgical never events in the state. One of those errors was a wrong surgery error. The rest were retained objects.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Needles are removed from packaging during a spinal surgery in North Texas, Tuesday, June 30, 2026.<\/p>\n Smiley N. Pool\/The Dallas Morning News<\/p>\n A total of five of the 18 retained object reports, Rian wrote, were erroneous \u2014 three were duplicates and two were clerical errors. Rian did not respond to a follow-up question about whether the medical center submitted corrected data to the state after identifying the duplicates and clerical errors.<\/p>\n Of the remaining 13 reports, Rian wrote, 11 were \u201cno harm events.\u201d All involved patients, Rian wrote, were informed and made aware.<\/p>\n Over the course of the 18 months, Rian wrote, UT Southwestern performed more than 86,000 surgeries \u2014 meaning the retained object incidents were a tiny fraction of the overall surgery count.<\/p>\n Other large hospitals<\/a> in Texas \u2014 Memorial Hermann-Texas Medical Center in Houston, Houston Methodist Hospital, Methodist Hospital in San Antonio and University Hospital in San Antonio \u2014 each reported one-third or less of the number of never events in the same time period.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Statewide, the facility with the second-highest count was Texas Health Harris Methodist Hospital in Fort Worth with 12 never events reported over the 18-month period. The third-highest was CHRISTUS Mother Frances Hospital in Tyler with 11 never events reported.<\/p>\n The health systems for both of those hospitals, in separate statements, described error reporting as a step toward improved patient safety.<\/p>\n “Our goal is to prevent safety events from ever occurring and we take them very seriously when they do,” Texas Health spokesperson Kimberly Walton wrote in a statement. “These events are self-reported and evaluated to identify opportunities for improvement.”<\/p>\n “We encourage our caregivers to speak up and report concerns,” CHRISTUS Health spokesperson C.C. Gonzalez-Kurz wrote in a statement, “because that is how safe systems are built.”<\/p>\n Data issues<\/p>\n The News\u2019 analysis of never events in Texas covered only the last 18 months. There\u2019s a reason.\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n The Texas Department of State Health Services, which collects and maintains the preventable adverse event data<\/a> hospitals and surgery centers submit every six months, told The News over email it only retains publicly releasable facility-specific reports for the most recent 18 months.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n