Implementing a standardized safe surgery program reduces serious reportable events.

Area of Science:

• Healthcare quality improvement
• Surgical patient safety

Background:

• Patient safety during the perioperative period is critical for quality care.
• Safe surgery practices are recommended by quality organizations to enhance patient safety.
• Effective implementation of these practices aims to decrease serious reportable event (SRE) rates.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the impact of a standardized safe surgery program on SRE rates.
• To compare SRE rates and time between events before and after program implementation.

Main Methods:

• Retrospective cohort study analyzing 683,193 cases over 4 years.
• Observational audits assessed program adoption and compliance.
• Tracking of SRE rates (retained surgical item, wrong site, wrong patient, wrong procedure) and time between SREs.

Main Results:

• A 52% reduction in SRE rate was observed post-implementation (0.075 to 0.037 per 1,000 cases).
• Mean time between SREs increased significantly from 27.4 to 60.6 days.
• Robotic cases showed a significantly higher SRE rate (7 times more likely) than non-robotic cases, despite equal impact from the program.

Conclusions:

• An effectively implemented standardized safe surgery program leads to a significant decrease in SREs.
• Robotic surgeries present a heightened risk for SREs, necessitating targeted safety interventions.