Vermont Program for Quality in Health Care in collaboration with Vermont Association of Hospitals and Health Systems, Vermont College of American College of Surgeons, all Vermont hospitals, and Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center:
Collecting and submitting surgical clinical data to the American College of Surgeons National Surgical Quality Improvement Program (ACS NSQIP), this project seeks to improve surgical outcomes and performance through data analysis and comparative performance monitoring. The goal of the project is to develop an infrastructure for a clinical management system designed to improve quality, enhance patient safety, and reduce costs of surgical care across the state of Vermont. To date, hospital enrollments in the NSQIP in the region are up 50%. The potential beneficiaries of the project include approximately 60 surgeons performing general, orthopedic, gynecological, and urologic inpatient and outpatient surgeries on adults in the five hospitals enrolled, as well as the patients undergoing the 57,753 surgical procedures, for example, that were performed on adults in Vermont in 2012. ACS NSQIP points the way toward transforming surgical care from fee-for-service to pay-for-performance.