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Real-time data can drive up SCIP performance

Quality Improvement Monitor, March 14, 2008

Even small hospitals with limited resources can perform well on Surgical Care Improvement Project (SCIP) measures by doing real-time data collection and getting back to clinicians immediately if there's a miss.

"You're kind of killing two birds with one stone," says Jan Fitzgerald, MS, RN, director of quality and medical management for the division of healthcare quality at Baystate Medical Center in Springfield, MA. "You're getting your data, and you're improving your care."

The spotlight on hospital performance has never been brighter. In December 2007, CMS began publicly reporting on its Web site Hospital Compare (www.hospitalcompare.hhs.gov) about how well healthcare facilities did on measures to prevent venous thromboembolism (VTE). That followed the previous public posting of hospital scores on three SCIP infection measures about antibiotic timing, selection, and discontinuation.

As of January 1, The Joint Commission (formerly JCAHO) began requiring hospitals that select SCIP as one of their core measures to report about cardiac surgery patients with controlled 6 a.m. postoperative serum glucose, surgery patients on beta-blocker therapy prior to admission who receive a beta-blocker during the perioperative period, and surgery patients with appropriate hair removal. "The thing that seems to drive improvement the most is public reporting," says Fitzgerald, who is also a member of the SCIP speakers bureau. "People can see what's going on around the processes of care."

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