When a great big zero is A+

On several occasions, I presented data here on this blog about the efforts of BIDMC to eliminate central line infections. You can now view those data on our hospital website.

Our community hospital, BID~Needham, operates under its own license and has a staff and Board highly committed to quality and safety improvements. It also chose to engage in a program to eliminate central line infections. The Needham effort had several components:

-- Develope guidelines for the prevention of blood stream infections;
-- Work with procurement to create a standardized supply kit;
-- Use a standardized protocol for maximum sterile barrier precautions;
-- Use Chlorhexidine-based antiseptic for skin preparation;
-- Use a standardized protocol for catheter hub and port disinfection; and
-- Educate both health care worker and patients.

Well, the results for this small hospital are pretty spectacular and are presented above. They have demonstrated that a sustained rate of zero is possible. I say that this is one case where zero warrants a grade of A+!