A Case for a Safe Surgery Policy in Arkansas

There is a need for a state-wide policy to promote safe surgeries and protect the
residents of Clarksville City, Johnson County, AR, against Surgical Site Infections (SSI).
Indeed, with one to three out of every one hundred Americans that undergo surgery
developing infections, SSI is a major healthcare problem not just to the Clarksville
community but in the whole of Arkansas and to all Americans (Arkansas Department of
Health, n.d.).
Such a policy should require all healthcare providers to have in place a mechanism for
implementing and monitoring best practices for the prevention of SSI, as a condition for
being licensed to perform surgeries. However, for the policy to be successful, its development
and implementation would require the interdisciplinary collaboration of several stakeholders,
including but not limited to the Arkansas Department of health, municipal health
departments, healthcare providers, clinicians, and patients and their families.
Besides stakeholder engagement, in designing and implementing the policy, the state
should take into consideration pertinent ethical issues. One such issue is the question of who
will absorb the costs associated with implementing SSI prevention measures at the health
facility level. In particular, it must be questioned whether for-profit healthcare providers can
be trusted to absorb the costs without passing them down to consumers. Therefore, it will be
important to urge providers to examine the cost-effectiveness of the measures they propose to
implement.
This sharing can be summed up in the following Tweet: SSI is the most costly type of
hospital-associated infection, costing Americans in excess of $3 billion annually and being
responsible for more than a million patient days that can be prevented (Patient Safety
Movement, 2022). Enact a #SafeSurgery policy and protect #Arkansans.

A CASE FOR A SAFE SURGERY POLICY IN ARKANSAS 3

References

Arkansas Department of Health. (n.d.). Healthcare-Associated Infections. Retrieved from
Arkansas Department of Health: https://www.healthy.arkansas.gov/programs-
services/topics/healthcare-associated-infections
Patient Safety Movement. (2022). Actionable Patient Safety Solutions (APSS): Surgical Site
Infections. Irvine: Patient Safety Movement.