The Surgical Care Improvement Project (SCIP) is a national quality partnership involving organizations interested in improving surgical care by significantly reducing surgical complications. As a partner in this effort, our group focused on improvement in antibiotic selection and timing as related to surgical incision. After forming a multidisciplinary rapid response team in 2008, enacting a plan-do-study-act (PDSA) strategy, and implementing an anesthesia information management system, we were able to improve compliance and documentation to our goal of 90% compliance in both measures.
Keywords: Antibiotic administration; information management; performance improvement.