Via NSHealth:

Yarmouth Regional Hospital in Canada has been honored by the American College of Surgeons for its excellent surgical care in 2022. This hospital, along with 77 others, stood out for their top-quality surgery results.

The American College of Surgeons has a special program, called the National Surgical Quality Improvement Program (ACS NSQIP®). Hospitals in this program keep track of how well their surgery patients do, both during and after surgery. This helps them make sure patients are safe and get the best care.

Yarmouth Regional Hospital did really well in two categories: one for all types of surgery cases and another for more complicated, risky surgeries. They used data from 2022 to see which hospitals had the best results.

Tracey Watkins-Allen, a leader at the hospital, said they joined the ACS NSQIP to get better at what they do. They’ve used what they learned to improve their surgeries, and they’re proud of this recognition.

To decide which hospitals did best, the program looked at eight different areas, like how many patients died after surgery, had breathing problems, needed a ventilator for a long time, had kidney failure, heart problems, pneumonia, surgical site infections, or urinary tract infections.

Dr. Blair MacDonald, a surgery lead at Yarmouth Regional Hospital, said this recognition shows how good their surgery team is.

Out of the 615 hospitals in the program in 2022, only 78 were recognized like this. Some hospitals were recognized in both categories, and others in just one.

The ACS NSQIP is unique because it looks at real surgery results and adjusts for how sick patients are. Its goal is to make surgeries safer and prevent problems or deaths related to surgery. This also helps lower healthcare costs. Over 850 hospitals worldwide use this program.

Finally, the American College of Surgeons, which started the program, is a big group of surgeons founded in 1913. They work to make surgery better and safer, and have more than 90,000 members.