Inpatient surgical care: timely antibiotic before surgery

Antibiotics are medicines that can kill bacteria that cause infections. Infections are a possible complication of any surgical procedure. When patients receive antibiotics within one hour before surgery, their risk for wound infection is reduced. A higher percent may indicate that a hospital provides a higher level of patient care.

About this measure

This measure tracks the percent of surgery patients who receive antibiotics at the right time (within one hour prior to surgery).

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.