Developing the American College of Surgeons Quality Improvement Framework to Evaluate Local Surgical Improvement Efforts
Clifford Y. Ko, Tejen Shah, Heidi Nelson, Avery B. Nathens
Abstract
The American College of Surgeons (ACS) Quality Programs collect more than 3500 improvement efforts annually. These efforts are usually local (ie, occurring within a hospital) or small scale (ie, low resourced, low funded, or unfunded) 1 and routinely conducted by frontline clinicians and clinical teams. We tried to identify an appropriate and adequate framework to evaluate these improvement efforts; however, no single framework for small-scale, clinician-led improvement efforts exists. Current available frameworks focus on investigative or research-based efforts, efforts led by improvement specialists, or large-scale (ie, resourced, funded) improvements. Herein we describe the development of the ACS Quality Improvement Framework, whose function is to evaluate smallscale surgical improvement efforts.