The staff at Delta County Memorial Hospital takes infection prevention seriously. The results of the hospital's surgical site infection prevention program were recently published in the "State of Colorado Status Report on Health Facility-Acquired Initiative".

What is a Surgical Site Infection?

Any time a patient undergoes surgery, a risk for developing an infection exists. The surgeon reviews the chance for infection with patients as part of the pre-surgery consent process.

Surgeries in some patients carry a greater degree of risk than others. Patients who are smokers or who have other health problems such as diabetes, obesity, and/or heart problems are at a greater risk for developing infections.

In addition, surgeries where a medical device is implanted, such as a joint replacement, can pose a greater risk of an infection even in a healthy patient.

What is SCIP?

The Surgical Care Improvement Project (SCIP) partnership is a multi-year national campaign, which began in August 2005 with the goal to substantially reduce surgical mortality and morbidity through collaborative efforts. Surgical site infections are the third most commonly reported hospital acquired infection. The goal of the project was to reduce nationally the incidence of surgical complications by 25 percent by the year 2010.

Through the efforts of the national quality partnership, evidence based quality measures were developed for hospitals with the goal of preventing an estimated 13,000 patient deaths and 271,000 surgical complications each year.

For the period from Aug. 1, 2010 – July 31, 2011, Delta County Memorial Hospital reported the following data:

Hernia repair: Zero infections out of 110 procedures.

Hip replacement: Zero infections out of 57 procedures.

Hysterectomy (abdominal): Zero infections out of 22 procedures.

Hysterectomy (vaginal): Zero infections out of 29 procedures.

Knee replacement: Two infections out of 101 procedures.

"We promote a culture of targeting zero health care associated infections," said Jeanine Finnell RN, Delta County Memorial Hospital infection preventionist. "The hospital has been very pleased with the results we've seen by participating in this project. Nationally the average hospital surgical site infection rate is 2.5 percent and Delta County Memorial Hospital's rate is 0.2 percent by comparison."

The operating room staff's efforts were recently recognized at a lunch held to celebrate their success.

Delta County Memorial Hospital has five operating rooms and three endoscopy rooms. Specialties performing surgeries at the hospital include obstetrics and gynecology, urology, general surgery, orthopedics, ophthalmology, ear, nose and throat (ENT) and podiatry.