Reducing the Rates of Surgical Infections

Hospital programs can reduce the rates of surgical infections through proper antibiotic use, which also results in large cost-savings.

Eleven hospitals in the state of Washington (USA) have worked for the past year as part of the Surgical Infection Prevention Collaborative Northwest (SIP NW) to reduce their rates of surgical infections, recognized as a major preventable form of patient injury, mortality, and healthcare costs. 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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