Study: Participation in quality initiative doesn't guarantee safety improvement

A study from the University of Michigan Medical School found no indication that 263 hospitals participating in the American College of Surgeons’ National Surgical Quality Improvement Program (ACS-NSQIP) performed better than 526 hospitals not involved in the program, according to HealthData Management.

ACS-NSQIP involves having trained nurses at participating hospitals record data about operations and send it to a database for analysis. But researchers found that there was no improvement in any of four measures at ACS-NSQIP hospitals as similar non-participating facilities. After three years, the rates of all four measures had dropped at participating hospitals, but the same was true for non-ACS-NSQIP hospitals. The 11 types of operations examined were esophagectomy, pancreatic resection, colon resection, gastrectomy, liver resection, ventral hernia repair, cholecystectomy, appendectomy, abdominal aortic aneurysm repair, lower extremity bypass, and carotid endarterectomy.

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