Local hospital receives international recognition for meritorious outcomes from the American College of Surgeons

YARMOUTH — The American College of Surgeons National Surgical Quality Improvement Program (ACS NSQIP®) has recognized Yarmouth Regional Hospital as one of 78 ACS NSQIP participating hospitals that have achieved meritorious outcomes for surgical patient care in 2022.  

As a participant in ACS NSQIP, Yarmouth Regional Hospital is 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. 

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 that includes higher risk cases (“High Risk”). 

Risk-adjusted data from the July 2023 ACS NSQIP Semi-annual Report, which presents data from the 2022 calendar year, were used to determine which hospitals demonstrated meritorious outcomes. Yarmouth Regional Hospital has been recognized on both the “All Cases” and “High Risk” Meritorious lists. 

“When we joined ACS NSQIP, we aimed to better understand how we were performing to identify areas of strength and opportunities for improvement,” says Tracey Watkins-Allen, Yarmouth Regional Hospital site leader and health services director for Perioperative and Surgical Services and Medical Device Reprocessing services for Nova Scotia Health’s Western Zone. 

“Our teams have worked hard to use the information we have gained to support improvements and we are proud to be recognized for the quality services we are delivering our patients,” she said. 

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 infarctions)
• respiratory (pneumonia)
• SSI (surgical site infections-superficial and deep incisional and organ-space SSIs)
• urinary tract infection. 

“We are gaining valuable insights through our participation in ACS NSQIP and will continue to use this information to improve our surgical care,” says Dr. Blair MacDonald, Yarmouth Regional Hospital’s surgery lead. "This is a great reflection on the entire perioperative team and the excellent outcomes we provide for our surgical patients.”

The 78 commended hospitals achieved the distinction based on their outstanding composite quality score across the eight areas listed above. Sixty-two hospitals were initially recognized on the “All Cases” list and 62 hospitals were initially recognized on the “High Risk” list; the 62 hospitals represent approximately 10 percent of the 615 calendar-year 2022 ACS NSQIP hospitals. 

Forty-six hospitals are recognized on both the “All Cases” and “High Risk” lists, 16 other hospitals are on just the “All Cases” list, and 16 other hospitals are on the “High Risk” list only – yielding 78 hospitals in total. 

ACS NSQIP is the only internationally 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 healthcare costs follows. ACS NSQIP is a major program of the American College of Surgeons and is currently used in over 850 adult and pediatric 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 North America and have established it as an important advocate for all surgical patients. The college has more than 90,000 members and it is the largest organization of surgeons in the world.

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