NQF Member comments due May 27, 2008 by
6:00 pm, ET
Public comments due May 20, 2008 by
6:00 pm, ET
Almost 30 million operations are performed in the United State every year. Peri-operative care -- including pre-operative preparation, intra-operative management and post-operative care – are critical functions within surgical facilities that require coordination among many multi-disciplinary providers within the surgical facility as well as externally. The timeliness and efficiency of the peri-operative care systems within facilities contribute to the patient outcomes and overall quality of surgical care delivered. Unfortunately numerous reports, including the Institute of Medicine’s To Err is Human have noted that significant numbers of patients undergoing surgery suffer complications and less than optimal patient outcomes.
To date, NQF has endorsed 28 hospital-level measures, 9 measures for ambulatory surgery centers and 12 measures for clinicians addressing peri-operative care. Additional measures are needed, particularly in the areas of timeliness, efficiency, care coordination, patient safety, transitions of care and outcomes of care. More information on the overall performance of peri-operative services would provide stakeholders with a robust picture of the quality of surgical services delivered in the US.
The Steering Committee assisted NQF staff in evaluating 18 candidate measures against the NQF-endorsedTM measure evaluation criteria of importance, scientific acceptability, usability, and feasibility, as well as standard measure specifications identified by the Committee to achieve harmonization. The detailed measure evaluations and meeting summaries for the Steering Committee are available for Member review only.
Pursuant to the Consensus Development Process, this draft document, along with the accompanying material, is being provided for purposes of review and comment only—not voting. You may post your comments and view the comments of others using the navigation menu at left side.
NQF will post and take into consideration only those comments received by the above deadline(s). NQF reserves the right to identify and remove any objectionable content. NQF is not responsible for the views and opinions expressed in posted comments.
Download a PDF of the "National Voluntary Consensus Standards for Surgery and Anesthesia: Additional Performance Measures, 2008" and view the Timeline for Consideration of the Measures.
NQF Member comments must be submitted no later than Tuesday, May 27, 6:00 pm, ET.
Supporting documents may be submitted by email to surgicalcare@qualityforum.org with the subject line – “Surgical Facilities”.