Question

btain your unit/hospital’s baseline surgical procedure infection rate. What does the numerator and the denominator mean? Compare your facility-specific rate with that of your colleagues, rationalizing the differences. Why is denominator data important to the facility?

Answer 1

Each hospital has different calculations for surgical site infections(SSI),depending on their policies and plan.Most of the hospitals calculate SSI depending on Operative/emergency rates.It should be calculated only if the number of hospital associated infections is >1.Denominators include -number of patients admitted/discharged, number of hospital days, number of device days.

Hospital wide infection rates /100 admissions for a given period of time(month,year) =Number of SSI / Number of patients admitted *100

Denominator data is of most imporatnce as it will show the infection percentage and the no of hospital admissions,which actually gives the perfect result for calculating infection rates.SSI are ward specific,device specific and procedure specific.