Inpatient surgical care: appropriate method of hair removal before surgery

Surgical patients often need to have their hair removed before their surgery. Shaving is not recommended as it can expose the patient to a higher risk of infection, since the skin may be abraded or broken.  Safer methods for hair removal, typically electric clippers, are recommended. 

If a razor is used to remove patient hair prior to surgery, there is an increased risk of infection.  When hospitals use safer methods, like electric clippers, they lower the risks. Therefore, a higher percentage may indicate that a hospital provides a higher level of patient care.

About this measure

This measure tracks the percentage of safer pre-surgery hair removal performed on all patients who required pre-surgery hair removal.

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.