Published: January 04, 2010 07:12 pm      

Hamilton participating in national surgical quality program

Hamilton Medical Center has been accepted into the National Surgical Quality Improvement Program (NSQIP), the nation’s largest, validated, benchmarked and risk-adjusted surgical outcomes quality improvement program.

The NSQIP provides participating hospitals and their surgical staff with outcome reports, statistical analysis, “best practice methods” and support necessary to implement targeted quality improvement programs and action plans that have demonstrated enhancements in the safety and quality of surgical care delivered by participating hospitals.

“Patient safety is a top priority at Hamilton Medical Center,” said Dr. Ian Hamilton, vascular surgeon and program director. “Patient safety is an integral part of the overall quality of surgical care. The NSQIP data empowers us with new information that assesses the systems of care that our surgical patients encounter at�Hamilton. Participating in this program will enable us to make continuous, state-of-the art, safety and quality improvements in the surgical care we deliver to our patients.”

The program is designed and supported by the American College of Surgeons (ACS). It was started in the Veterans Administration system as a quality initiative in 1991. In 2004, the ACS received permission to offer a pilot program, which has now expanded into a national quality�improvement offering. To date, 243 hospitals participate in the NSQIP. Hamilton Medical Center will be the fourth NSQIP hospital in the state of Georgia with the next closest facility Emory University Hospital.

Hamilton Medical Center will employ a full-time nurse with experience in surgery, ICU and clinical chart review. Additionally, this nurse will go through an ACS NSQIP training program to learn high-quality data compilation, documentation and data entry to improve surgical quality. Surgery charts will be audited on a schedule intended to provide randomness and ensure that the audit is appropriately weighted.

All data will be entered into a secure ACS Web site where it will go through statistical analysis including comparison to other hospitals’ data (benchmarking) and risk adjustment, followed by near real-time reporting back to Hamilton Medical Center for local analysis and improvement actions as needed. Reports will allow each participating facility to compare outcomes in the entire database or focus on hospitals of similar size, geographic region, etc.

“Through the NSQIP, our enhanced quality improvement program will further target the reduction of preventable complications, making surgical care at Hamilton Medical Center even safer,” said Hamilton.