A department of surgery looks at outcomes.
Quality screens for care of surgical patients were selected and implemented in 1993 by a department in a moderate-sized community hospital. The screens were selected so that assessment might be made of all surgical care and that each surgeon annually might know results compared to peers. There were 127 quality screen failures (2.3%) in 5,615 surgical patients. The incidence of wound infection was 0.1%. Twenty-seven of the screen failures (21.3%) were confirmed by peer review. Issues of quality of care in the confirmed screen failures were resolved by letter or morbidity/mortality conference. The approach merits replication.
Vogel
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Department of Surgery, Mount Carmel East Hospital, Columbus, Ohio, USA.
D006801:Humans; D015994:Incidence; D008485:Medical Audit; D017063:Outcome Assessment, Health Care / Q000458:organization & administration*; D018024:Peer Review, Health Care; D011785:Quality Assurance, Health Care / Q000458:organization & administration*; D013503:Surgery Department, Hospital / Q000458:organization & administration*; D013530:Surgical Wound Infection / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000209:etiology