Reducing the Rates of Surgical Infections

An estimated 40-60% of surgical infections are preventable with the appropriate use of prophylactic antibiotics. In a hospital with an annual surgical volume of 10,000 operations, a 50% reduction in its estimated 300 surgical infections would result in annual cost savings of about US$450,000.

In one hospital in the SIP program, 100% of all surgical cases received the appropriate selection of prophylactic antibiotic, of which 75% were begun in the appropriate one-hour period before surgical incision; and 97% of surgery patients who received those antibiotics had them discontinued within the appropriate 24-hour period after surgery. The number of cases between surgical infections in this hospital has more than doubled from 40-91 cases.

"In 2002 we had 12 surgical site infections and in 2003 we reduced the number to five. This equates roughly to a cost savings of US$39,000 and seven patients who were prevented from having an infection,” said the summary report for SIP NW Outcomes Congress. Qualis Health (Seattle, WA, USA), a nonprofit organization, managed and provided technical and professional assistance to SIP NW participating hospitals in Washington.




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