Surgery Infection Rates Made Public Online

SEATTLE — The Washington State Hospital Association has begun releasing hospital-specific surgical infection rate data public for the first time. The release of information comes as a result of the Washington State Legislature requiring the data to be collected and made public in 2007. By law, hospitals are required to report into an electronic database reporting infection rates for cardiac, hysterectomy, and orthopedic procedures. The website allows users to sort hospitals by county, alphabetically, and from highest too lowest or lowest to highest infection rates.

 

“The web site provides a resource for hospitals to benchmark their own achievements against and provides a resource for best practices,” says Beth Zborowski, director of Program Communications at WSHA. “For example, if a hospital was experiencing infections in one surgical area, they could look at similar hospitals who were performing better and find out what strategies were being used to prevent infections there.”

 

Zborowski said that increasing transparency is a future trend for infection rates as well as other quality indicators, and reporting should be on evidence-based measures that are proven to have an impact on patient outcomes. She added that if the reporting does not result in improvements in patient care, then they are pointless.

 

“Right now, hospitals are required to report a ton of data to a wide variety of organizations, from federal and state government to national improvement organizations,” Zborowski said.  

 

“Sometimes hospitals are reporting on the same measure, but there is a slightly different definition of way the information must be reported, creating an additional administrative burden and cost for hospitals. Ideally, a set of national, evidence-based measures should be developed. This would also give hospitals across the country national best practice benchmarks — something that is not currently available for infection rates.”