title: Quality and cost impacts: prevention of post-operative clean wound infections.
abstract: This paper report the effectiveness of a nursing quality assurance program over three years, which demonstrates improvement in the incidence and severity of post-operative clean wound infections and the associated extended length of hospital stay and cost. General surgery categories included cardiovascular, orthopaedic, neurosurgery, kidney, abdominal, mammary and other. Cardiovascular categories included coronary artery bypass graft (CABG), heart transplant, and atrial valve replacement. Hip replacement and total knee replacement procedures were included in the orthopaedic category. Additional length of stay and concomitant hospital costs were calculated. Results show that early reporting of observations and implementation of appropriate treatment will decrease the incidence, severity and associated costs of post-operative clean wound infections.
authors.affiliation: School of Health Service Management, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia.
authors.forename: H M
authors.initials: HM
authors.lastname: Lapsley
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Vogels
mesh_terms: D001315:Australia; D003362:Cost-Benefit Analysis; D017721:Hospital Costs / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D006801:Humans; D007902:Length of Stay / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D009738:Nursing Service, Hospital / Q000592:standards*; D011785:Quality Assurance, Health Care; D013514:Surgical Procedures, Operative / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D013530:Surgical Wound Infection / Q000191:economics / Q000451:nursing* / Q000517:prevention & control*