Dr. Donald E. Fry commented that the SCIP measures are valid. The trouble is, they’re not inclusive.
"To paraphrase Paul Simon, ‘There must be 50 ways to get an SSI.’ And antibiotics are only a small portion of that," said Dr. Fry, executive vice president at Michael Pine and Associates, Chicago, an analytic health care consulting firm.
"I hope that this presentation will be a significant stimulus for us to go forward with not measuring silly process measures. This is not synchronized swimming. We need to be measuring outcomes. We need objective measures of what it is we’re trying to do, looking at how good hospitals do it well and bad ones don’t do it so well, and coming up with an entire strategy for SSIs," he said.
The SCIP study was funded by the VA. Dr. Hawn declared having no relevant financial interests.