Charter/Vision:
The Connecticut Surgical Quality Improvement Collaborative (CtSQC), a CTACSPA initiative, was formed to provide a forum in which health care professionals share knowledge and best practices in the treatment of surgical patients in Connecticut.
Mission
The CTSQC seeks to continually improve the quality of surgical care, prevent complications, and eliminate patient harm at all Connecticut hospitals using a patient-centered approach that is both data-driven, and cost-effective. The Collaborative will foster an environment of collaboration, learning, and innovative inquiry in order to achieve its goals. It will preferentially use available risk-adjusted clinical datasets including, but not limited to, the American College of Surgeons’ National Surgical Quality Improvement Program (NSQIP) in order to identify improvement opportunities and to design interventions for eliminating performance gaps. As a learning community, it seeks to widely share all resulting quality improvement strategies and best practices with others regardless of enrollment in NSQIP or other programs. The Collaborative also seeks to participate in outreach efforts to educate other healthcare providers and the general public on patient safety and quality improvement in surgical patients.
Member Pledge
CtSQC members jointly pledge to:
- Work collaboratively and collegially to create a community of learning and continuous process improvement
- Commit to developing and implementing a surgical Quality and Process Improvement program at their institutions
- Work jointly to provide the highest level of safety and quality for all patients;
- Respect the confidentiality of patients and Collaborative members
- Conduct themselves with highest levels of integrity
Benefit of the Collaborative
- Through this collaboration all Connecticut Hospitals will participate in quality initiatives to improve quality and lower healthcare costs.
- We have several examples, thus far, which highlight short-term successes in reducing complications in our patient population.
- The use of the Surgical Safety Checklist was instituted through a team training program in one of our hospitals to reduce the overall post-surgical complication rate by over 60%
- Surgical Unit Safety Prevention (SUSP)
- Enhanced Reliability After Surgery (ERAS)
- High Reliability