Quote:
Originally Posted by Becca9800
Not a sound grading method though, I don't put my eggs in that scorecard basket.
A hospital is dinged for superficial infections (skin) that develop up to 30 days from date of the surgery, and for deep or organ/space infections that develop up to 90 days after the surgery . Too many factors that the doc nor hospital can control once patient is discharged to home e.g. is patient taking antibiotics properly, keeping wound clean/dry, are they smokers, is the diabetic controlling their blood sugars. I dealt w a patient who developed a deep wound infection about 21 days after lumbar surgery, and it was a nasty one. My hospital was dinged for the infection simply bc of the timing. The patient blamed the surgery. We looked at every component of infection prevention utilized in the OR for that case, everyone did everything that was required, still the patient developed a debilitating infection. It is noted in the patient's record that he reported to the Infectious Disease physician, "approximately one week after his laminectomy, he began to use his dog's wire brush to scrape away the scab and scratch his surgical incision". The bug infecting his wound was an odd one (I can't recall its name) but this bacteria is associated with acne and is also found on the coats of dogs. The patient blamed the surgical team, he believed someone had facial acne and dropped bacteria into his open wound. We did look into that, some had blemishes, but no cases of acne amongst the surgical team. The patient wouldn't even consider that his dog's brush transferred the bug into his wound. We'll never know for sure either way but the hospital bears the ding on its scorecard to this day.
Another fault with this grading system, if the patient's initial surgery was at Hospital A and the patient goes to Hospital B for treatment of a post-op wound infection, Hospital A, nor the surgeon performing the surgery, is dinged w the infection on their scorecards. One hand doesn't know what the other hand is up to. I think this gaping hole is a huge problem for a couple of reasons.
Bottom line, you can't put all your faith in publicly reported data, it's a less than perfect system.
You also can't put much stock in what you read on social media sites. IMHO, your best bet is to ask a friend working in your local healthcare facilities, we know which hospitals, or even which units within hospitals to avoid. We know which practitioners deserve your trust, and we def know which practitioners are to be avoided.
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Were you perhaps thinking of corynebacterium???
I agree, many of the metrics that go into the hospital "rating" (which btw is nothing more than to amuse the lay public, real problems are addressed in a different manner), are just plain bogus. My favorite is the "medication error" rate. If I prescribe a Tylenol for 6 PM, the nurse has to administer it between 5:30 and 6:30. if it is 1 minute late, it is counted as a medication "error" . What's worse, is that if the patient goes on to die during that admission from their underlying stage 4 pancreatic carcinoma 2 weeks later, the bean counters call that a death due to "medical error". And that's why they put out these absurd numbers like 500,000 people in the USA die from "medical errors" each year. It is, of course, complete nonsense, but it fits the political narrative that seems to be popular. As Chief of Staff, I always
loved to report this crap to NY State
The other problem is that some hospitals are more diligent in reporting than others, so the whole baseline can be skewed. The conditions the bean counters focus on are myocardial infarction, cerebrovascular accident and pneumonitis. They have so much garbage built into the criteria that it is almost medically meaningless, but again, it "shows the public" that the government is looking out for them.
Another rating metric that I also love is "readmissions within 30 days" for the same problem. A patient is admitted and treated successfully for CHF (congestive heart failure), and discharged home, where they proceed to eat 15 grams of sodium a day, so naturally they are back in 3 days. Somehow the bean counters consider that the fault of the hospital. Go figure!