Hospital teams across Illinois worked on decreasing their surgical infection rates through participation with the Illinois Foundation for Quality Health Care (IFQHC) in the Surgical Infection Prevention Collaborative. Between May 2003 and May 2004, participating hospitals teams implemented, tested and tracked changes in surgical antibiotic administration for patients undergoing selected surgical procedures.
Each hospital chose a group of patients as their pilot population, either all of one type of surgery or multiple types of surgeries, depending on the cases performed per month. Teams generated ideas to improve care processes and tested their effectiveness in the pilot populations. The teams were encouraged to attempt rapid cycle tests of change and when "perfected," hospitals spread the change to other surgical patients.
The teams focused on the following:
IFQHC held three face-to-face Learning Sessions in addition to the final celebratory Outcomes Congress held on May 5, 2004. During the Action periods between Learning Sessions, hospitals performed their tests of process changes. We held monthly telephone conferences with both guest speakers and sharing of updates and lessons learned by the collaborative teams. In addition, a group e-mail was established for the use of the participants in the collaborative. Senior Leader Reports were prepared by the teams each month and shared with other teams via the list serve. These were reviewed and assessed according to the Institute for Healthcare Improvement’s suggested evaluation criteria.
Median improvement for the Primary Measures of the Surgical Infection Prevention Collaborative were:
| Performance Measure | Median Improvement |
| On Time Antibiotics Administration | 26.8% |
| Use of Appropriate Antibiotic | 7.6% |
Antibiotics Discontinued Within |
19.1% |
IFQHC is continuing to assist hospitals improve quality of care. Implementing the same practices statewide could result in a drastic decrease of infections each year in Illinois.
As the Quality Improvement Organization (QIO) for Illinois, the Illinois Foundation for Quality Health Care (IFQHC) works with healthcare providers in a variety of different settings. As part of our contract with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, we are responsible for demonstrating improvement in the inpatient setting with the following topics: Surgical Infection Prevention (SIP), Pneumonia, Heart Failure and Acute Myocardial Infarction.
For more information contact Scott Fortin, manager of Communications for IFQHC at 630-928-5803.
For more information, contact: Sylvia L. Carson, Sr. Marketing/Communications Specialist, Illinois Foundation for Quality Healthcare (630) 928-5869, scarson@ilqio.sdps.org.
This material was prepared by Illinois Foundation for Quality Health Care, the Medicare Quality Improvement Organization for Illinois , under contract with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), an agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The contents presented do not necessarily reflect CMS policy.
