Hospital Receives Recognition for Meritorious Outcomes from the American College of Surgeons

The American College of Surgeons’ National Surgical Quality Improvement Program (ACS NSQIP^®) has recognized Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre (our Hospital) as one of 83 ACS NSQIP participating hospitals that have achieved meritorious outcomes for surgical patient care in 2017. As a participant in ACS NSQIP, our Hospital tracks the outcomes of inpatient and outpatient surgical procedures and collects data that assesses patient safety and can be used to direct improvement in the quality of surgical care.

Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre is also one of only four hospitals in Ontario to receive this distinction.

The ACS NSQIP recognition program commends a select group of hospitals for achieving a meritorious composite score in either an “All Cases” category or a category which includes only “High Risk” cases. Risk-adjusted data from the July 2018 ACS NSQIP Semiannual Report, which presents data from the 2017 calendar year, were used to determine which hospitals demonstrated meritorious outcomes. Our Hospital has been recognized on both the “All Cases” and “High Risk” Meritorious lists.

“This recognition validates our Hospital’s commitment to quality improvement and patient outcomes,” said Jean Bartkowiak, President and CEO of our Hospital and CEO of the Thunder Bay Regional Research Institute. “Everyone involved in our health care teams – from surgeons, to staff, to patient family advisors – constantly focus on how and what to improve, in the name of better, safer patient-focused care.”

Each composite score was determined through a different weighted formula combining eight outcomes. The outcome performances related to patient management were in the following eight clinical 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. The 83 commended hospitals achieved the distinction based on their outstanding composite quality score across the eight areas listed above.

ACS NSQIP is a 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. ACS NSQIP is a major program of the American College of Surgeons and is currently used in nearly 850 hospitals.

The American College of Surgeons is a scientific and educational organization of surgeons that was founded in 1913 to raise the standards of surgical practice and to improve the care of the surgical patient. The College is dedicated to the ethical and competent practice of surgery. Its achievements have significantly influenced the course of scientific surgery in America and have established it as an important advocate for all surgical patients. The College has more than 80,000 members and it is the largest organization of surgeons in the world.