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About this Measure
When a patient needs to have a knee replaced, an artificial knee is placed in the patient. If the incision site on the patient's leg were to become infected after the surgery, successful use of the new knee parts could be in jeopardy. Therefore, it is important to reduce the risk of an infection at the incision site.
This measure looks at the infection rates that occur after knee replacement surgery.
A lower number is better for this measure.
What is a Benchmark?
Southcoast compares all of its internal quality measures against benchmarks to help gauge our performance. Benchmarks are usually an external suitable comparison group, such as a national average, or an expected target set by an external agency. When none are available, Southcoast sets its own internal performance goals.
This benchmark: The benchmark for this measure comes from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention National Healthcare Safety Network database, which creates a national average from hundreds of hospitals nationwide.
What Does This Mean?
A lower number means that there are less infections in patients who had knee replacement surgery. At Southcoast, the goal is to have no infections in these cases.
Our infection rate for the last reported time period is within the expected NNIS range. Our internal experts are reviewing every infection case to see what we can learn and do better. Even though we have used the appropriate bundle to reduce the risk of infections, some patients have still developed an infection. We are working aggressively to do better as quickly as possible.
What Southcoast is Doing to Improve this Measure
Southcoast follows national best-practice recommendations from expert organizations that are aimed to reduce the risk of an infection after a knee replacement. This bundle of measures is known as SCIP, which stands for Surgical Care Infection Prevention.
This bundle prescribes the following steps:
- Order an appropriate antibiotic prior to surgery.
- Give the antibiotic within one hour of starting the surgery.
- Stop the antibiotic within 24 hours of ending the surgery.
- If hair removal is necessary at the incision site, use clippers instead of a razor to reduce the risk of cutting the skin that may let germs enter the cut.
If an infection develops, a team of experts reviews the case to determine what we can learn and do better.
When a spike in infection rates is noted for any given period, our Operating Room Executive Committee (made up of members from all three hospital sites) reviews current procedures and evidence-based practices.
The Orthopedic chairperson at each hospital site also closely monitors infection rates. This enables us to quickly identify and track our progress in prevention and infection control efforts.
In many cases, the feedback mechanism of sharing data and reinforcing current evidence-based practices is enough to reverse the trend. This includes skin care, wound care, patient education, caregiver education and training in the pre-, inter- and post-operative settings.
A Note About Our Data
All data on this site are aggregate data for all Southcoast Hospitals sites.
Trend for this Measure
This chart shows how this measure has changed over the past four quarters.
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