National Surgical Quality Improvement Plan (NSQIP)

While there are exist­ing mech­a­nisms which sup­port sur­gi­cal safe­ty and qual­i­ty in the South Aus­tralian hos­pi­tals, there are lim­i­ta­tions to the cur­rent approach which is incon­sis­tent­ly applied statewide. The Sur­gi­cal and Peri­op­er­a­tive Care Statewide Clin­i­cal Net­work (SPC­SCN) see the oppor­tu­ni­ty for sur­gi­cal units in South Aus­tralia (SA) to ben­e­fit from a sys­tem-wide sur­gi­cal qual­i­ty improve­ment pro­gram built on val­i­dat­ed, risk-adjust­ed post-oper­a­tive mor­bid­i­ty and mor­tal­i­ty data that is cap­tured in a stan­dard­ised approach. 

The Amer­i­can Col­lege of Sur­geons Nation­al Sur­gi­cal Qual­i­ty Improve­ment Pro­gram (NSQIP) assess­es a hospital’s sur­gi­cal out­comes against local and inter­na­tion­al peers. NSQIP enhances a hospital’s abil­i­ty to zero in on pre­ventable com­pli­ca­tions, using val­i­dat­ed, risk-adjust­ed clin­i­cal and admin­is­tra­tive data. The results enable tar­get­ed, qual­i­ty improve­ment ini­tia­tives to be devel­oped. These ini­tia­tives enhance the qual­i­ty of sur­gi­cal care while reduc­ing com­pli­ca­tions and costs. NSQIP has been assessed as com­pa­ra­ble or in some cas­es supe­ri­or in qual­i­ty to oth­er sur­gi­cal risk cal­cu­la­tors and sur­gi­cal out­come data­bas­es. Com­bin­ing the capa­bil­i­ties of NSQIP and the South Aus­tralian Audit of Sur­gi­cal Mor­tal­i­ty (SAASM) would pro­vide an oppor­tu­ni­ty to strength­en sur­gi­cal safe­ty and qual­i­ty in SA. 

The SPC­SCN is cur­rent­ly work­ing with sur­gi­cal divi­sions, safe­ty and qual­i­ty teams and exec­u­tive lead­er­ship across Local Health Net­works (LHNs) to scope the pos­si­bil­i­ty of imple­ment­ing NSQIP across SA hospitals. 

If you are inter­est­ed to find out more about this project, con­tact us at: CEIH.​SurgicalPerioperative@​sa.​gov.​au