Best Practices

Metastar

Best Practice # 1

Wisconsin Hospitals Decrease Surgical Infections

Teams from twenty hospitals in Wisconsin worked on decreasing their surgical infection rates through participation with MetaStar in the Surgical Infection Prevention Collaborative. Between May 2003 and June 2004, participating hospitals teams implemented, tested and tracked changes in surgical antibiotic administration for patients undergoing cardiac surgery, abdominal surgeries, colon surgery, hip and knee replacements and hysterectomies. The teams also made changes and tracked data for three other measures affecting surgical infections. The result of the changes: improved care that reduces illness and deaths related to surgical infections.

The teams made significant progress on the following measures:

• Increasing from 78% to 94% the proportion of surgical patients receivingprophylactic antibiotic within one hour prior to surgical incision
• Increasing from 51% to 84% the proportion of surgical patients with prophylactic antibiotics discontinued within 24 hours after surgery end time.
• Maintaining at 94% the proportion of surgical patients receiving appropriate prophylactic antibiotics.
• Perioperative Supplemental Oxygen increased from 56% to 86%
  Appropriate Hair Removal increased from 75 % to 93%

The Collaborative was led by MetaStar, the Medicare Quality Improvement Organization for Wisconsin, under contract with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), an agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. MetaStar is continuing to work with hospitals statewide to improve quality of care and to continue to decrease their rates of surgical infection.

For more information, contact Kay Simmons, VP-Communications, MetaStar, at (800) 362-2320 or ksimmons@metastar.com

Best Practice # 2

Metastar did a project that focused on Medication Safety and had 20-30 hospitals that participated. The purpose of the study was to improve patient safety by promoting the adoption of practices known to decrease medication errors and to learn about the barriers to adopting such practices, and ways to overcome them, in a variety of hospital settings.

They focused on things such as Eliminating Dangerous Abbreviations, Policies and Procedures for High Risk Meds, Intended Use of Medication, CPOE and Barcoding.

Secondly, Metastar is participating in a national project with AHRQ and the VA National Center for Patient Safety, which is teaching hospitals and state agencies about "just culture" and other safety issues.

Third, is an initiative in the patient safety area, the Madison Patient Safety Collaborative, in which the four competing hospitals in the Madison area got together and worked on safety issues.

For more information contact Kay Simmoms at ksimmons@metastar.com.

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