Surgical Site Infection Surveillance Service (SSISS)

Welcome to the Surgical Site Infection Surveillance Service web page. This site will give you the information you need to become familiar with the service.

The Surgical Site Infections Service was established in 1997. The scheme encourages hospitals (both NHS and private) to use surveillance to improve the quality of patient care by enabling them to collect and analyse data on Surgical Site Infections (SSI) using standardised methods.

It provides national data that can be used as a benchmark allowing individual hospitals to compare their rates of SSI with collective data from all hospitals participating in the service.

The aim is to provide a flexible system that enables hospitals to participate for a minimum three month period in one or more of 14 defined categories of surgical procedures.