QCH nationally recognized for surgical patient care by NSQIP
December 02, 2021
QCH has been recognized for our outstanding quality in surgical patient care in 2020 by the American College of Surgeons, one of only 17 Canadian hospitals – and the only hospital in Ottawa to be recognized for High Risk surgeries of the two hospitals in Ottawa that were recognized.
In order to be considered for this award, our hospital submitted information on the outcomes of inpatient and outpatient surgeries. That information determines what category our hospital gets recognized for: All Cases or High Risk.
The American College of Surgeons National Surgical Quality Improvement Program (ACS NSQIP) recognized QCH for our High Risk surgeries.
To be recognized, hospitals need to exhibit superior outcomes in these complex areas: mortality, unplanned intubation, ventilator > 48 hours, renal failure, cardiac incidents (cardiac arrest and myocardial infarction); respiratory (pneumonia); SSI (surgical site infections-superficial and deep incisional and organ-space SSIs); or urinary tract infection.
In addition, in order to be considered for High Risk, the surgeries had to have an expected risk in the highest quartile for each of those areas, and our hospital must have a better than average score in both mortality and morbidity. QCH was one of only 12 hospitals in Canada who consistently surpassed outcomes for high risk surgeries. A total of 90 hospitals were recognized internationally of an eligible 607 participating hospitals.
QCH uses the NSQIP program data to review our surgical outcomes and continue to utilize the data to implement surgical quality initiatives as we strive to further improve outcomes for our patients each and every year.
The 90 commended hospitals achieved the distinction based on their outstanding composite quality score across the eight areas listed above. 71 hospitals were initially recognized on the “All Cases” list and 71 hospitals were initially recognized on the “High Risk” list; the 71 hospitals represent approximately ten percent of the 706 calendar-year 2020 ACS NSQIP hospitals. 52 hospitals are recognized on both the “All Cases” and “High Risk” lists, 19 other hospitals are on just the “All Cases” list, and 19 other hospitals are on the “High Risk” list only – yielding 90 hospitals in total.
ACS NSQIP is the only nationally validated quality improvement program that measures and enhances the care of surgical patients. This program measures the actual surgical results 30 days postoperatively as well as risk adjusts patient characteristics to compensate for differences among patient populations and acuity levels. The goal of ACS NSQIP is to reduce surgical morbidity (infection or illness related to a surgical procedure) and surgical mortality (death related to a surgical procedure) and to provide a firm foundation for surgeons to apply what is known as the “best scientific evidence” to the practice of surgery. Furthermore, when adverse effects from surgical procedures are reduced and/or eliminated, a reduction in health care costs follows. ACS NSQIP is a major program of the American College of Surgeons and is currently used in nearly 850 adult and pediatric hospitals.
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