The American College of Surgeons National Surgical Quality Improvement Program has recognized Piedmont Athens Regional, as one of 60 ACS NSQIP participating hospitals that have achieved meritorious outcomes for surgical patient care. Piedmont Athens Regional and Eisenhower Army Medical Center in Fort Gordon, GA are the only two hospitals in Georgia to be recognized for this accomplishment.
 
As a participant in ACS NSQIP, Piedmont Athens Regional is required to track the outcomes of inpatient and outpatient surgical procedures and collect data that directs patient safety and the quality of surgical care improvements.  
               
“Piedmont Athens Regional is proud to be one of the top quality and safety hospitals in the country,” said Dr. Charles Peck, president and CEO of Piedmont Athens Regional. “Our physicians, surgeons, clinical and professional staff work diligently every day to ensure our patients receive the best and safest care possible.”
 
The ACS NSQIP recognition program commends a select group of hospitals for achieving a composite meritorious outcome related to patient management in eight clinical areas:  mortality, unplanned intubation, ventilator > 48 hours, renal failure, cardiac incidents (cardiac arrest and myocardial infarction); respiratory (pneumonia); SSI (surgical site infections-superficial and deep incisional and organ-space SSIs); or urinary tract infection.
 
The 60 hospitals commended achieved the distinction based on their outstanding composite quality score across the eight areas listed above.  Risk-adjusted data from the July 2016 ACS NSQIP Semiannual Report, which presents data from the 2015 calendar year, were used to determine which hospitals demonstrated meritorious outcomes.
 
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 over 770 adult and pediatric hospitals.