Eisenhower Army Medical Center recognized for high quality in eight surgical areas

By Mr. David M White (Army Medicine)October 14, 2015

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Eisenhower Army Medical Center has been recognized by the American College of Surgeons' National Surgical Quality Improvement Program for its safety initiatives and quality of care in announcement during the ACS' Clinical Congress, Oct. 4-8 in Chicago.

The ACS NSQIP program recognized 52 of 445 participating hospitals for achieving meritorious outcomes for surgical patient care in 2014. Other hospitals selected for recognition include Johns Hopkins in Baltimore; the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida; George Washington University Hospital in Washington, D.C.; and New York's Mount Sinai Hospital. EAMC is the only Department of Defense hospital to be recognized.

The hospital closest to EAMC also selected is Bon Secours St. Francis Hospital in Charleston, South Carolina. The most distant from EAMC is King Abdulaziz Hospital-Eastern Region in Al Asha, Saudi Arabia.

"To be recognized among the best … not just among military hospitals, not just among public or private civilian hospitals, but among all hospitals … is an honor for the entire EAMC staff, said Col. Michael A. Weber, EAMC commander. "It speaks of our dedication to delivering to our service members and beneficiaries high-quality care from a high-reliability health care organization. We do this day in and day out, year after year, so the recognition also speaks to EAMC's readiness to serve those who serve the United States."

Participating hospitals are required to track the outcomes of inpatient and outpatient surgical procedures and then analyze their results. These results will direct patient safety initiatives within the hospital and impact the quality of surgical care.

"This recognition is really for the hard work people here at Eisenhower have put in for years, establishing a culture of quality and care," said Col. James D. Frizzi, M.D., EAMC chief of surgery. "It's nice for an international organization of medical professionals to shine a light on what we do every day. And for the beneficiaries who receive care in the Central Savannah River Area, they can be assured they're getting the best care right here at home, not in Atlanta and not in Columbia, South Carolina."

The ACS NSQIP recognition program commends a select group of hospitals for achieving meritorious composite score. That composite score was determined through a weighted formula combining eight outcomes. The outcome performances related to patient management were in the following clinical areas: Mortality, Cardiac incidents (cardiac arrest and myocardial infarction); pneumonia, unplanned intubation, ventilator>48 hours, renal failure, SSI (surgical site infections-superficial and deep incisional and organ-space SSIs); or urinary tract infection.

The 52 hospitals commended achieved the distinction based on their outstanding composite quality score.

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 more than 560 hospitals.