The study, led by a group of researchers at Case Western Reserve University, examined the relationship between Surgical Care Improvement Project infection-prevention process-of-care measures and post-operative infection rates.
The study looked at data from 405,720 patients at 398 hospitals and found that adherence to any individual SCIP measure failed to significantly reduced infection rates. Individual SCIP measures include items such as giving patients antibiotics one hour before surgery and appropriate surgical site hair removal.
However, when researchers created composite, all-or-nothing scores based on adherence to all measures, a significant correlation between adherence and reduced infection risk was found.
The authors state that aggregate measures of quality may be better indicators of high-quality care. However, adherence to individual measures only are publicly reported.
Read the JAMA study on SCIP measures and infection risk.
