“Over the past decade we’ve seen significant advances in patient safety and quality of care, but we still have much work to do. Now more than ever, we need to focus on working together, sharing best practices and using the best tools and the best data to help us improve care for our patients. Hospitals that participate in FSCI will be evidencing their leadership in advancing patient safety and a higher quality of care.”
Diane PinakiewiczPresident, National Patient Safety Foundation
FSCI Benefits
While implementation of FSCI will benefit hospitals and surgical departments, surgical patients will receive the most immediate and lasting benefits in the form of fewer complications, faster recovery time and a shorter average hospital stay. The examples below are derived from hospital experiences with ACS NSQIP. FSCI is a version of ACS NSQIP customized for Florida’s unique operating environment.
Patient Benefits
- Fewer complications
- For patients at Surrey Memorial Hospital in Vancouver, British Columbia, patients with surgical site infections dropped by between 5.7 and 13.3 percent after certain types of surgery within the course of two years.
- Faster recovery time
- Eighty-two percent of ACS NSQIP hospitals have seen improvement in post-operative morbidity levels, and 66 percent have seen improvement in mortality levels. (Annals of Surgery, Sept 2009).
- Shorter hospital stays
- Surgical patients at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, MI enjoyed an average reduction of 1.54 days per hospital stay because of quality improvements.
Surgeon Benefits
- More complete data leads to better, more targeted decision-making
- FSCI uses peer-controlled, validated data from patients’ medical charts to quantify 30-day risk-adjusted surgical outcomes – including post-discharge, when nearly 50 percent of complications take place.
- This allows valid comparison of outcomes among all hospitals in the program, pinpointing any areas where outcomes are better or worse than expected, when adjusted for patient risk factors.
- FSCI identifies areas for improvement for the greatest return and highest impact.
- Collaborative approach facilitates peer sharing, networking
- Surgeons in the FSCI collaborative benchmark against compiled results.
- Quarterly conference calls allow surgeons to learn from each other by sharing experiences and best practices with peers.
Hospital Benefits
- Focus on quality improvement can prevent complications and disparities of care
- Hospitals participating in ACS NSQIP prevent about 250 to 500 complications per hospital per year (Annals of Surgery, Sept 2009).
- Hospitals of all types improved their quality of care after joining ACS NSQIP, with poorer performers at the outset seeing the greatest improvements.
- Cuyuna Regional Medical Center (a small rural hospital in Minnesota) reduced stroke incidence from above national average to below average by using ACS NSQIP to implement a new anesthesia plan and standardized anticoagulation orders and protocols.
- Fewer complications mean lower costs
- In Michigan, 33 hospitals participating in a NSQIP collaborative are saving more than $50 million/year from reduced complications.
- Complications can raise the cost of hospitalization for major surgical procedures up to five-fold. A major surgical complication costs an average of $11,626.
(Journal of the American College of Surgeons, 2006). - For more examples, click here.
- Enhanced reputation through improved surgical quality.
- Higher profit margins
- The average hospital profit margin for a surgical patient with complications is 3.4 percent; while for cases without complications, the average margin jumps to 23.0 percent.
(Journal of the American College of Surgeons, 2006).
