• Press Release

The Mount Sinai Hospital Receives National Recognition for Surgical Patient Care Outcomes from the American College of Surgeons

  • New York, NY
  • (November 17, 2016)

The Mount Sinai Hospital has been recognized for meritorious outcomes for surgical patient care for the third consecutive year by The American College of Surgeons National Surgical Quality Improvement Program (ACS NSQIP®), one of 60 ACS NSQIP participating hospitals in the nation to achieve this recognition. As a participant in ACS NSQIP, The Mount Sinai Hospital 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.

The Mount Sinai Hospital is one of only 18 hospitals to have received meritorious status two years in a row, and one of only five hospitals to receive the status in three consecutive years, out of 615 domestic and international hospitals that were analyzed for the most current outcomes measures.  

“Mount Sinai is honored to once again receive this distinction, which clearly positions our surgeons as industry leaders,” said Michael L. Marin, MD, Professor of Surgery at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and System Chair of Surgery at Mount Sinai Health System. “Our faculty provide the highest quality surgical care for patients of all ages and are dedicated to advancing treatments and outcomes through innovative research and state-of-the-art technology.

“This recognition is only possible through the outstanding efforts of our surgeons and the detailed precision of our Surgical Outcomes and Quality Improvement (SOQI) team,” said Celia Divino, MD, Professor of Surgery at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, Chief of the Aufses Division of General Surgery at Mount Sinai Health System, and ACS NSQIP Surgeon Champion for The Mount Sinai Hospital. “The SOQI team continuously abstracts longitudinal data to ensure optimal performance, and pinpoints opportunities to innovate new standards in patient care.”

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.

The Surgical Outcomes and Quality Improvement (SOQI) office is a centralized group within the Department of Surgery that focuses on improving clinical outcomes and patient experience through dedicated data collection/analysis, innovative process engineering, and targeted quality improvement projects. The office monitors a broad range of surgical procedures including general surgery, vascular, plastics, surgical oncology, colorectal and pediatrics. The department’s relatively high case volume fosters the ability to impact a large population of surgical candidates and implement improvements that are tailored to specific patients’ needs.

The Ruth J. & Maxwell Hauser and Harriet & Arthur H. Aufses, Jr., MD, Department of Surgery at The Mount Sinai Hospital is nationally recognized for its excellence in surgical care for a broad spectrum of specialties. The Department includes the Divisions of Colon and Rectal Surgery, General Surgery, Metabolic Surgery, Endocrine and Minimally Invasive Surgery, Pediatric Surgery, Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, the Surgical Intensive Care Unit, Surgical Oncology and Vascular and Endovascular Surgery.

The American College of Surgeons is a scientific and educational organization of surgeons that was founded in 1913 to raise the standards of surgical practice and to improve the care of the surgical patient.  The College is dedicated to the ethical and competent practice of surgery. Its achievements have significantly influenced the course of scientific surgery in America and have established it as an important advocate for all surgical patients.  The College has more than 78,000 members and it is the largest organization of surgeons in the world.

About the Mount Sinai Health System

Mount Sinai Health System is one of the nation’s leading integrated academic health systems and one of the largest in the New York metropolitan area. Its comprehensive system includes seven hospitals, more than 400 outpatient practices, over 600 research and clinical laboratories, the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, and the Mount Sinai Phillips School of Nursing. Together, the Health System comprises approximately 48,000 employees, more than 9,000 physicians, and 8,600 nurses.

As a leading learning health system, Mount Sinai combines clinical expertise with scientific discovery to improve patient care while training the next generation of health care and biomedical leaders. The Health System provides care across every stage of life, from prenatal care through geriatrics, while advancing personalized medicine through artificial intelligence, data science, and biomedical research.

Mount Sinai is consistently recognized among the nation’s leading academic health systems for patient care, research, and education. The Mount Sinai Hospital is ranked No. 1 in New York by Newsweek and No. 5 on the magazine’s World’s Best Hospitals list. The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai ranks No. 11 among U.S. medical schools and No. 1 among freestanding medical schools for National Institutes of Health funding, reflecting the strength of its scientific enterprise and leadership in biomedical research.

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