Inpatient surgical care: antibiotic stopped timely after surgery

Antibiotics are medicines that can kill bacteria that cause infections. Infections are a possible complication of any surgical procedure. It is important to have antibiotics before surgery and to continue to take them for a short time after surgery. However, taking them for longer than necessary can expose the patient to side effects and other complications. For most surgical procedures, antibiotics should be stopped within 24 hours after surgery.  For cardiac surgery, antibiotics should be stopped within 48 after surgery.  A higher percentage may indicate that a hospital provides a higher level of patient care.
 

About this measure

This measure tracks how often hospitals stopped giving antibiotics to surgery patients when they were no longer needed to prevent surgical infection.

Northwestern Memorial Hospital wants to provide the most up to date data. For this measure, our data is from a more recent time period than the benchmark time period.

Note: In this measure, a higher number is better.