Ontario Surgical Quality Improvement Network (ONSQIN)

Improvement in surgical care has benefits for:

• Patients, who experience fewer complications and better outcomes, shorter hospital stays and improved satisfaction
• Surgeons and surgical teams, who receive robust reports that provide performance information to guide surgical care and identify areas for improvement
• Hospitals, which sustain reduced disparities of care and improved patient outcomes and realize lower costs of care, through avoidance of complications

Visit Quorum to get resources and join the community of practice.

American College of Surgeons National Surgical Quality Improvement Program

The American College of Surgeons National Surgical Quality Improvement Program® (ACS NSQIP®) is a leading validated, risk-adjusted, outcomes-based program to measure and drive improvements in surgical care. For each year of participation in ACS NSQIP, a hospital has, on average, the opportunity to:

• prevent 250–500 complications
• save 12–36 lives
• reduce health care costs by millions of dollars

Ontario hospitals that participate in ACS NSQIP through the Ontario Surgical Quality Improvement Network are part of the Ontario collaborative of ACS NSQIP called NSQIP-ON. All of the Ontario hospitals participating in the ACS NSQIP program are considered ACS Surgical Quality Partners.

Participating surgical teams have access to high-quality clinical data that can be accurately compared against data at the local, provincial, national and international levels. This allows providers to benchmark top performers and can be used to identify areas for improvement and track progress.

Members connect regularly via educational webinars, meetings and the annual Ontario Surgical Quality Conference, and identify opportunities to improve surgical care quality using clinical data collected through the American College of Surgeons’ National Surgical Quality Improvement Program (ACS NSQIP).

Surgical Quality Improvement Plans

As one of the first steps in their quality improvement journeys, Ontario Surgical Quality Improvement Network members review their ACS NSQIP data to identify areas for improvement and strategize a plan to address those issues. Surgical Quality Improvement Plans (SQIPs) are a tool used to help teams leverage their data to create actionable ideas and goals.

Surgical Quality Improvement Plans were adapted from the provincially mandated Quality Improvement Plans (QIPs), and serve as blueprints for how a surgical team will strive to improve quality at their hospital. A SQIP is a programmatic QIP designed to help Ontario Surgical Quality Improvement Network members:

• identify areas for improvement (using their ACS NSQIP data)
• implement evidence-based quality improvement initiatives and change ideas
• track data, process measures and outcomes to determine the effects of their quality improvement activities and change ideas

Submit your SQIP using the SQIP Navigator online tool.

Get more information, including program evaluation and Surgical Quality Improvement Campaign