Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps her Department is taking to help tackle post-operative infections in the context of (a) an ageing population and (b) trends in the number of joint replacement operations.
The UK Health Security Agency manages a national surveillance programme, the Surgical Site Infection (SSI) Surveillance Service, which enhances the quality of patient care by providing hospitals with a framework for collection and comparison of their rates of SSI against national benchmarks. This information is used to review and guide clinical practice to reduce the risk of infection following surgery. Hip and knee replacements are two of the 17 categories of surgery under surveillance by hospitals. Surveillance in at least one orthopaedic surgical category per quarter, per financial year is mandatory for all National Health Service hospitals undertaking orthopaedic surgery, with hip and knee replacements being the most numerous.