85. Use of Dual Statistical Process Control Charts for Early Detection of Surgical Site Infection Outbreaks at a Community Hospital Network

BACKGROUND: We recently showed that the empirical use of a combination of 2 moving average (MA) statistical process control (SPC) charts was highly sensitive and specific for detecting potentially important increases in surgical site infection (SSI) rates. We performed this follow-up study to examine the performance of these same SPC charts when applied to known SSI outbreaks. METHODS: We retrospectively applied 2 MA SPC charts to all 30 SSI outbreaks investigated from 2007 to 2015 in a network of over 50 community hospitals. These outbreaks were detected via routine SSI surveillance activities that occurred in the network. We reviewed prior outbreak investigation documentation to determine the estimated time of outbreak onset and time of traditional surveillance outbreak detection. The first SPC chart utilized procedure-specific, composite SSI data from the hospital network for its baseline; the baseline for the second chart was calculated from SSI data from the outbreak hospital undergoing analysis. Both charts used rolling baseline windows but varied in baseline window size, rolling baseline lag, and MA window size. SPC chart outbreak detection occurred when either chart had a data point above the upper control limit of 1 standard deviation. Time of SPC detection was compared with both time of outbreak onset and time of traditional surveillance detection. RESULTS: With the dual chart approach, SPC detected all 30 outbreaks, including detection of 25 outbreaks (83%) prior to their estimated onset (Figure 1). SPC detection occurred a median of 16 months (interquartile range, 12–21 months) prior to the date of traditional outbreak detection, which never occurred prior to outbreak onset. Both individual SPC charts exhibited at least 90% sensitivity in outbreak detection, but the dual chart approach showed superior sensitivity and speed of detection (Figure 2). CONCLUSION: A strategy that employed optimized, dual MA SPC charts retrospectively detected all SSI outbreaks that occurred over 9 years in a network of community hospitals. SPC outbreak detection occurred earlier than traditional surveillance detection. These optimized SPC charts merit prospective study to evaluate their ability to promote early detection of SSI clusters in real-world scenarios. [Image: see text] [Image: see text] DISCLOSURES: All Authors: No reported Disclosures.