Inpatient surgical care: appropriate antibiotic before knee arthroplasty surgery (IDPH)

Antibiotics are medicines that can kill the bacteria that cause infections. Infections are a possible complication of any surgical procedure. For certain types of surgery, some antibiotics work better than others to prevent wound infections, so selecting the right one is important. A higher percent may indicate that a hospital provides a higher level of patient care.

About this measure

This measure tracks the percentage of patients having knee replacement surgery who were given the right kind of antibiotic before surgery.

Note: Because this is the first reporting period for this measure, we are not able to provide a graph with trend data. The percentages in the graph were calculated from data on patients who were discharged between October 2009 and September 2010.

In this case, a higher number is better.