Noteboom The Law Firm

VA Surgical Care Improvement Program Not Performing to Standards

Specific actions and restrictions implemented through the Surgical Care Improvement Program (SCIP) were designed to lessen or prevent the amount of Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) patients who experience surgical site infections.

According to a recent study, however, the results are not what were hoped for. Now, the future of the program itself is being called into question.

Surgical site infections cause multiple problems for patients. Patients with surgical site infections: 

 

• are twice as likely to die than patients without them;
• are 60% more likely to require admission to ICUs than patients without them; and
• are 5 times more likely to require readmission after being discharged from the hospital.

 

SCIP was first implemented in 2003. The study examined more than 60,000 procedures, which were performed across 112 VA medical centers between the years 2005 and 2009. Researchers' results included those patients suffering both minor and major infections at the site of surgery within 30 days of the date of surgery.

The SCIP program mandates 5 specific "infection prevention measures" to which hospitals must adhere and report following surgery. Researchers had never previously compared SCIP adherence to individual patients.

Over the 5 years, the overall ending rate of 6.2% of patients suffering surgical site infections was not appreciably different from when the study began, once all factors were taken into consideration.