A new surgical site infection improvement programme for New Zealand: early progress.

Two to five percent of those who have an inpatient surgical procedure will experience a surgical site infection (SSI). The Health Quality & Safety Commission has instituted New Zealand's first national Surgical Site Infection Improvement Programme (the SSII Programme), delivered jointly by Auckland and Canterbury District Health Boards. Through a combined package of surveillance and improvement interventions the SSII Programme aims to reduce the incidence of SSIs in New Zealand hospitals, beginning initially with hip and knee arthroplasties. Within one year of the programme starting there has been a significant nationwide improvement in the timing of surgical antimicrobial prophylaxis (p<0.0001), and the administration of the correct dose (p<0.0001). National compliance with an alcohol-based skin preparation remains high at > 95 %. In this paper we describe the purpose, background, structure and rationale of the programme and provide results to date.