NMMC Receives National Recognition for Meritorious Outcomes from the American College of Surgeons
TUPELO, Mississippi—The American College of Surgeons National Surgical Quality Improvement Program (ACS NSQIP®) has recognized North Mississippi Medical Center as one of 78 ACS NSQIP participating hospitals that have achieved meritorious outcomes for surgical patient care in 2021.
As a participant in ACS NSQIP, NMMC 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 results are a cooperative effort among the specialty teams in preoperative care, anesthesia, surgery, post-operative and ICU care and reflect the teamwork among the nursing and physician staff to improve outcomes and reduce complications,” said neurosurgeon Louis Rosa, M.D., FACS, who serves as surgeon champion for this project.
Surgical clinical reviewer Stephanie Gillean, RN, BSN, manages NMMC’s data collection and submission to ACS.
“NMMC is one of only three hospitals statewide that participates in this nationally recognized quality improvement program. It reflects our commitment to providing the best care to our community,” Dr. Rosa says. “We have garnered a wealth of information from the program. We are very proud of this honor and look forward to using this data as a tool to drive further improvements in operative 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 which includes only “High Risk” cases. Risk-adjusted data from the July 2022 ACS NSQIP Semiannual Report, which presents data from the 2021 calendar year, were used to determine which hospitals demonstrated meritorious outcomes. NMMC has been recognized on the “All Cases” Meritorious list.
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.
ACS NSQIP is the only nationally 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 health care costs follows. ACS NSQIP is a major program of the American College of Surgeons and is currently used in nearly 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 America and have established it as an important advocate for all surgical patients. The College has more than 84,000 members and it is the largest organization of surgeons in the world.
