Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared on Intuitive’s website.
A high rate of colon surgical site infections (SSI) triggered financial penalties for Legacy Mount Hood Medical Center, a community hospital, in 2015. Based on a standard 1% annual penalty, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) ultimately reduced the medical center’s reimbursements by an estimated total of $585,000.
Each year, 160,000 to 300,000 U.S. patients develop a surgical site infection in the days or weeks following their operations. These complications:1
- Represent 20% of all hospital-acquired infections
- Increase hospital length of stay (LOS) by 9.7 days, on average
- Drive the most readmissions
- Place a significant burden on healthcare consumers, providers, and payers, costing the system $3.5 – $10 billion annually
The challenges
Legacy Mount Hood’s SSI challenges largely arose from the medical center’s inability to consistently provide minimally invasive surgery (MIS) for general surgery and colon cases. That shortcoming caused the medical center to send many colon cases to hospitals farther away. Not only did the referrals represent a revenue loss, but they also placed a travel burden on the hospital’s lower income and rural patient populations. Click here to continue>>
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