Hospital Joins National Program To Improve Surgical Care

DANBURY — Building on its commitment to provide safe, high-quality health care, Danbury Hospital has joined a national quality partnership of hospitals interested in improving surgical care known as the National Surgical Quality Improvement Program (NSQIP).

 The American College of Surgeons initiated NSQIP as the first nationally validated, risk-adjusted outcomes-based effort to measure and improve the quality of surgical care.  Danbury Hospital is among just over 30 US hospitals that currently employ NSQIP’s prospective peer-controlled database to quantify surgical outcomes and allow valid comparison of results among all hospitals in the program. 

Pierre F. Saldinger, MD, chairman of the Department of Surgery at Danbury Hospital, said, “This voluntary partnership will allow Danbury Hospital to play a leadership role in making significant strides toward surgical care improvement across the nation, while making resources available that will safeguard and further improve surgical care for our community.

“Our teams of surgeons, anesthesiologists, nurses, pharmacists, technologists and other professionals are committed to making surgical care improvements a regional priority, and to meet our patient’s expectations with superior service.   Quality and safety to patients remain the guiding forces in Danbury Hospital initiatives,” Dr Saldinger said, “because, we want to remain the provider of choice in meeting the health needs of our surrounding communities.”

As part of the NSQIP, a dedicated nurse reviewer at Danbury Hospital collects information about pre-operative risk factors and surgical procedures, along with the 30-day complication rates for patients undergoing major surgeries, according to Dr Saldinger. 

While strictly adhering to HIPAA standards for patient confidentiality, NSQIP provides independent statistical analysis of the data to check for quality and to prepare real-time reports for benchmarking purposes.

“Danbury Hospital is working to compare itself with its peer hospitals and with national averages in ways that will improve our overall performance and help patients understand that there important differences to consider when seeking a surgical provider, in particular for surgical specialty care,” Dr Saldinger said.                                                                                             

“NQSIP will help Danbury Hospital build upon its growing reputation as a leading health care organization.  It will further validate our many other quality designations from trusted, independent health industry experts,” said Frank J. Kelly, president and CEO of Danbury Hospital and Danbury Health Systems.  “Investments such as this and computerized physician order entry – the “gold standard” for patient safety in hospitals today – are intended to make Danbury Hospital among the safest hospitals in the nation.”

Earlier this year, Danbury Hospital was designated by Solucient, LLC, a national firm specializing in the statistical analysis of health care quality, among the best in its Top 100 Hospitals: National Benchmarks for Success report for 2004.  The primary goal of Solucient’s Top 100 Hospitals program is to objectively identify hospitals that organization-wide are the highest performers in the nation, and to make public the bar that has been set for hospital performance each year.

Specifically as it relates to its peer organizations in the category of  “Teaching Hospitals”, Solucient determined that Danbury Hospital had a lower death rate, better patient safety, shorter length of stay, and higher rate of growth in the percent of its community served.

According to Solucient, Top 100 Hospitals have set standards for quality care and financial performance in the United States because they have higher survival rates, keep more patients complication-free and hold down expenses – all while maintaining financially sound organizations to continue their mission to advance health and well-being in their communities. 

For a copy of Danbury Hospital’s Performance Report Card for Quality and Community Service, call 797-7462 or visit www.danburyhospital.org.