Person:

Yokoe, Deborah S.

Background: Surgical site infection (SSI) rates are publicly reported as quality metrics and increasingly used to determine financial reimbursement. Objective: To evaluate the volume-outcome relationship as well as the year-to-year stability of performance rankings following coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery and hip arthroplasty. Research Design: We performed a retrospective cohort study of Medicare beneficiaries who underwent CABG surgery or hip arthroplasty at US hospitals from 2005 to 2011, with outcomes analyzed through March 2012. Nationally validated claims-based surveillance methods were used to assess for SSI within 90 days of surgery. The relationship between procedure volume and SSI rate was assessed using logistic regression and generalized additive modeling. Year-to-year stability of SSI rates was evaluated using logistic regression to assess hospitals’ movement in and out of performance rankings linked to financial penalties. Results: Case-mix adjusted SSI risk based on claims was highest in hospitals performing <50 CABG/year and <200 hip arthroplasty/year compared with hospitals performing ≥200 procedures/year. At that same time, hospitals in the worst quartile in a given year based on claims had a low probability of remaining in that quartile the following year. This probability increased with volume, and when using 2 years’ experience, but the highest probabilities were only 0.59 for CABG (95% confidence interval, 0.52–0.66) and 0.48 for hip arthroplasty (95% confidence interval, 0.42–0.55). Conclusions: Aggregate SSI risk is highest in hospitals with low annual procedure volumes, yet these hospitals are currently excluded from quality reporting. Even for higher volume hospitals, year-to-year random variation makes past experience an unreliable estimator of current performance.

Background: A decade ago, the Institute for Healthcare Improvement pioneered a quality improvement (QI) campaign, leveraging organizational and personal social networks to disseminate new practices. There have been few rigorous studies of the QI campaign approach. Methods: Project JOINTS (Joining Organizations IN Tackling SSIs) engaged a network of state-based organizations and professionals in a 6-month QI campaign promoting adherence to three new evidence-based practices known to reduce the risk of infection after joint replacement. We conducted a cluster-randomized trial including ten states (five campaign states and five non-campaign states) with 188 hospitals providing joint replacement to Medicare. We measured adherence to the evidence-based practices before and after the campaign using a survey of surgical staff and a difference-in-difference design with multivariable adjustment to compare adherence to each of the relevant practices and an all-or-none composite measure of the three new practices. Results: In the campaign states, there were statistically significant increases in adherence to the three new evidence-based practices promoted by the campaign. Compared to the non-campaign states, the relative increase in adherence to the three new practices in the campaign states ranged between 1.9 and 15.9 percentage points, but only one of these changes (pre-operative nasal screening for Staphylococcus aureus carriage and decolonization prior to surgery) was statistically significant (p < 0.05). On the all-or-none composite measure, adherence to all three evidence-based practices increased from 19.6 to 37.9% in the campaign states, but declined slightly in the comparison states, yielding a relative increase of 23 percentage points (p = 0.004). In the non-campaign states, changes in adherence were not statistically significant. Conclusions: Within 6 months, in a cluster-randomized trial, a multi-state campaign targeting hospitals and professionals involved in surgical care and infection control was associated with an increase in adherence to evidence-based practices that can reduce surgical site infection. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s13012-017-0579-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.