Outpatient Surgery Magazine

The Affordable Care Act - March 2015 - Subscribe to Outpatient Surgery Magazine

Outpatient Surgery Magazine, providing current information on Surgical Services, Surgical Facility Administration, Outpatient Surgery News and Trends, OR Excellence and more.

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1 4 6 O U T P A T I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E O N L I N E | M A R C H 2 0 1 5 How We Set Up Our SSI Surveillance Program Tracking infections gives you the upper hand in the fight against them. S urgical site infections in hand cases had long been a prob- lem at our large ortho- pedic center. As our infection prevention- ist, I can't say for cer- tain which of the many initiatives we implemented deserves the credit for the sig- nificant decrease in hand SSIs, but the one thing I do know is that our SSI surveillance program set the stage for improvement. Monitoring and track- ing SSIs and trends made it possible to determine what problems existed and whether our interventions were helping. Currently, surgical centers aren't required to report SSI rates to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, so there aren't published rates we can use to benchmark against. (Rumor has it that may change soon.) But we know we're making strides, and will continue to do so. Here's how we did it, and how you can implement an SSI sur- veillance program. I N F E C T I O N P R E V E N T I O N Lori Groven, MSPHN, RN, CIC z KEEPING TRACK Consistent documentation is key to be able to access data and monitor trends.

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