Objective: National validation of claims-based surveillance for surgical-site infections (SSIs) following colon surgery and abdominal hysterectomy.
Design: Retrospective cohort study.
Setting: US hospitals selected for data validation by Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).
Participants: The study included 550 hospitals performing colon surgery and 458 hospitals performing abdominal hysterectomy in federal fiscal year 2013.
Methods: We requested 1,200 medical records from hospitals selected for validation as part of the CMS Hospital Inpatient Quality Reporting program. For colon surgery, we sampled 60% with a billing code suggestive of SSI during their index admission and/or readmission within 30 days and 40% who were readmitted without one of these codes. For abdominal hysterectomy, we included all patients with an SSI code during their index admission, all patients readmitted within 30 days, and a sample of those with a prolonged surgical admission (length of stay > 7 days). We calculated sensitivity and positive predictive value for the different groups.
Results: We identified 142 colon-surgery SSIs (46 superficial SSIs and 96 deep and organ-space SSIs) and 127 abdominal-hysterectomy SSIs (58 superficial SSIs and 69 deep and organ-space SSIs). Extrapolating to the full CMS data validation cohort, we estimated an SSI rate of 8.3% for colon surgery and 3.0% for abdominal hysterectomy. Our colon-surgery surveillance codes identified 93% of SSIs, with 1 SSI identified for every 2.6 patients reviewed. Our abdominal-hysterectomy surveillance codes identified 73% of SSIs, with 1 SSI identified for every 1.6 patients reviewed.
Conclusions: Using claims to target record review for SSI validation performed well in a national sample.