The growing presence of electronic anesthesia record keeping and perioperative informatics systems is contributing to a database of valuable information that can significantly improve patient care and patient outcomes. Efforts such as the National Surgical Quality Improvement Project and the Surgical Care Improvement Project have analyzed quality measures that directly correlate to patient outcomes. Several of these quality indicators are influenced by the performance of anesthesia providers’ activities in the perioperative period. These programs promote timely administration of preoperative antibiotics. One of their guidelines states that preoperative antibiotic should be given within an hour prior to surgical incision.

Surgical site infections are the most common postoperative complication. Reducing postoperative complications can reduce health care costs, and postoperative morbidity and mortality rates. The purpose of this project was to utilize an electronic feedback mechanism to improve anesthesia providers’ documentation of timely preoperative antibiotic administration.

Electronic feedback reminders in the form of screensaver dashboards displaying updated departmental timely antibiotic percentage metrics for the day, the past week, and the past month were displayed for 16 weeks. Text messages were delivered once a week for 6 weeks showing an anesthesia providers’ prior average one week on time antibiotic along with an equivalent department on time average. The measures were effective in improving the documentation of timely antibiotic administration.