A trio of Fraser Health hospitals have gained international recognition for their efforts to improve the quality of their surgical care and outcomes for patients.
Surrey Memorial, Chilliwack General and Burnaby Hospital were all recognized this month by the American College of Surgeons National Surgical Quality Improvement Program (ACS NSQIP) for achieving meritorious outcomes.
“I’m very happy for these teams,” says Dr. Dave Williams, Fraser Health’s executive medical director for quality and safety. “They have done tremendous work to do all of this. They are very dedicated surgeons, nurses, anesthesiologists and other people supporting that work to help provide high-quality surgical care. This is very exciting.”
Surrey, Chilliwack and Burnaby were among 89 participating hospitals to be recognized out of 719 eligible hospitals. All are required to track the outcomes of inpatient and outpatient surgical procedures and collect data that assesses patient safety, and can be used to direct improvement in the quality of surgical care.
All 11 of Fraser Health’s surgical hospitals participate in the ACS NSQIP but this was the first time that three sites simultaneously received the commendation.
Each participating hospital has a dedicated Surgical Clinical Reviewer who collects data, and a Surgeon Champion who leads quality-improvement efforts.
The hospitals then review data from semi-annual and online reports which help them identify how they may be underperforming. Quality committees use those findings to improve care.
The Fraser Health hospitals were recognized in the “all cases” and “high risk” categories for outcomes in the areas of mortality, cardiac, respiratory (pneumonia), unplanned intubation, ventilator for more than 48 hours, renal failure, surgical site infection and urinary tract infection.
Williams says this achievement speaks to the hospitals’ strong leadership, reviewers, champions and teamwork.
“This is the biggest patient safety program in the world so to get this kind of an honour is stupendous,” Williams says. “It shows that we are doing a great job here in Fraser Health and we want to continue to do it. Maybe the next step would be to have all of our surgical hospitals receive this award.”
The ACS NSQIP program was implemented in B.C. in 2011. There are 24 sites participating in the BC NSQIP Collaborative, including 23 adult sites and one pediatric site.
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