One of the quality measures reported by hospitals to the Centers
for Medicare and Medicaid Services which is published on the
Hospital Compare website is statistics on “surgery patients who
were given an antibiotic at the right time (within one hour of
surgery) to help prevent infection.” Answer the following questions
to reflect on your understanding of this quality measure. In a
minimum of 250 words address the following:
Why is it clinically important for patients to receive
antibiotics prior to surgery?
In regards to clinical documentation in the health record that
would be reviewed to report on hospital performance of this quality
measure, which portion of the record would provide the most
accurate details to confirm the administration and time of
administration of antibiotics prior to surgery?
If hospital a consistently scores low on this measure, what does
this indicate?
If a hospital is scoring low on this quality measure, which
clinical quality management process could be used to help the
hospital understand why the performance is low, formulate a plan to
improve its score, implement the plan, and evaluate results of this
measure in the future?
