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The Not-So-Hidden Costs of Surgical Site Infections
TODD E. BARNETT, RN, MBA
For the past decade, the health care community has been inundated with announcements from governmental
agencies and consumer watchdog groups reporting that tens of thousands of lives are lost each year as a result of avoidable incidents in US hospitals.1 Reports from around the world show a similar trend as well.2,3 Wrong site surgery and surgical site infections (SSIs) have been highlighted in many of these reports.
Surgical site infections are a subset of a larger group of infections known as health care-associated infections (HAIs). Surgical site infections affect many thousands of patients each year and contribute greatly to the morbidity and mortality associated with surgery. Annually, SSIs number approximately 500,000 out of an estimated 27 million surgical procedures. Surgical site infections are the third most commonly reported HAI, and they account for one-fourth of all HAIs.4,5 Health care-acquired infections can result in more than $50,000 in additional health care costs per patient,6 and hospitals generally do not receive full reimbursement for costs associated with HAIs. Although surgical services often generate the majority of a hospitals income, the costs associated with SSIs can severely cut into a hospitals profits, so finding ways to reduce HAIs and thus increase profits from surgical services is an important goal for hospital administrators.
Many recent improvements in delivery of perioperative care have been focused on reducing SSIs, including using as many disposable products as is possible in the OR.7 One area that has been neglected in the trend toward the use of disposable products, however, is electrocardiogram (ECG) lead wires.
These lead wires often are not sufficiently sterilized between uses, which can lead to HAIs and SSIs caused by contaminated lead wires8,9 that can be extremely costly to a hospital. This article explores one option for reducing HAIs and SSIs resulting from contaminated ECG lead wires: using disposable ECG lead wire sets.
FINANCIAL IMPACT OF SSIS
As a whole, HAIs adversely affect patient outcomes and are estimated to cost the health care industry and the general public billions of dollars each year. Recent estimates are that one of every 20 patients acquires an infection as a result of hospitalization, leading to higher costs, longer hospital stays, and...