Dr. Fry presents innovative surgical quality and efficiency measures to the Michigan Surgical Quality Collaborative • 06.15.11

Dr. Fry delivered a presentation entitled “Innovation in the measurement of surgical quality and efficiency” on June 10th, 2011 to the Michigan Surgical Quality Collaborative in Detroit. He discussed the challenges associated with defining and capturing complications of surgical care that often occur because a) specific complications may have vastly different severities and b) many complications of care are not identified until patients are discharged from the hospital. Dr. Fry’s presentation focused on how these challenges can be addressed using methods of statistical process control to identify risk-adjusted length of stay outliers of inpatient surgical care. He also stressed the importance of capturing readmissions to the hospital and ambulatory surgical interventions that were consequences of the prior operation. Dr. Fry concluded by proposing that adverse surgical outcomes should be defined as 90 day post-surgical deaths, in-patient excessive lengths of stay, and re-admission or ambulatory reoperation following hospital discharge.

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