Joint Base San Antonio, Texas — Army medical treatment facilities are maintaining surgical safety by using the American College of Surgeons National Surgical Quality Improvement Program to monitor and compare their patient safety data.

NSQIP is a nationally validated quality improvement program created by the American College of Surgeons that measures and evaluates the care of surgical patients through the application of scientific data and comparisons of the care among participating hospitals. 

Every year NSQIP recognizes 60 of the 770 participating hospitals for achieving meritorious outcomes for surgical patient care. The Eisenhower Army Medical Center in Fort Gordon, Ga., has been recognized by the NSQIP for its safety initiatives and quality of care for the second year in a row. 

Other hospitals recognized in 2016 include George Washington University Hospital, Washington, D.C., Mount Sinai Hospital, New York, the Cleveland Clinic and the Air Force's David Grant Medical Center, Travis Air Force Base, California.

The Army NSQIP program is part of a military, tri-service surgical quality collaboration with the Defense Health Agency (DHA) called the Military Healthcare System's Strategic Partnership with the American College of Surgeons (MHSSPACS). 

The MHSSPACS partnership is intended to improve educational opportunities, systems-based practices, and research capabilities in surgery. The strategic partnership will facilitate collaboration and the exchange of information between ACS and military health system to advance high-quality, cost-effective care for surgical patients.

These initiatives are directly a part of the surgical services lines at the MEDCOM level and in each medical treatment facility’s surgical department. The DoD is moving to have all DoD medical treatment facilities participate in NSQIP in the future so that there is a third party monitoring the safety outcomes for our Service Members.

Participating hospitals will be required to track the outcomes of inpatient and outpatient surgical procedures and then analyze their results. These results will direct patient safety initiatives within the hospital and impact the quality of surgical care. Much of the NSQIP report focuses on deaths, infections, proper procedures, falls, and returns for surgery to provide a picture of safety and quality at each facility. Data points are adjusted for the size of the facility and the services offered so a facility that doesn't have a particular service won't be penalized.

That data will be analyzed to create a composite score related to patient management in the following clinical areas: mortality, cardiac incidents (cardiac arrest and myocardial infarction); pneumonia, unplanned intubation, ventilator use for under 48 hours, renal failure, urinary tract infections, surgical site infections, superficial, deep incisional, and organ-space SSIs. 

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