2009 - Preventing Complications from Surgery
Blood clots in the veins and infections are two potential complications from surgery. Hospitals can reduce the risk of wound infection after surgery by making sure patients get the right medicines at the right time on the day of surgery. Hospitals can reduce the risk of blood clots by making sure that patients get preventive treatments. The measures below show how often hospitals provided the recommended care to prevent complications from surgery.
What do the fractions mean?
The denominator represents all those patients who were medically eligible to receive the particular treatment. The numerator represents all those patients who actually received the particular treatment for which they were medically eligible.
For example: Prophylactic antibiotics within 1 hour prior to surgery: 80%; 8/10 This means that 10 patients were medically eligible to receive prophylactic antibiotics within one hour before surgery and 8 patients actually received them. “0/0” means that no patients were medically eligible to receive that particular treatment.
Be careful when drawing conclusions from this information. Small numbers of patients may distort reported performance.
To view prior year reports, please click here.