[Skip to Content]
Upstate Community Hospital on Onondaga Hill.

Upstate Community Hospital earns prestigious recognition for surgical care

The American College of Surgeons National Surgical Quality Improvement Program (ACS NSQIP) has named Upstate Community Hospital one of just 89 facilities nationwide as a having meritorious outcomes for surgical care in 2019.

More than 600 hospital participating in the program were eligible for the recognition. As an ACS NSQIP-participating hospital, Upstate Community Hospital is required to track the outcomes of inpatient and outpatient surgical procedures. ACS then analyzes those outcomes and reports back to the hospitals to further inform patient safety initiatives improve the quality of surgical care.

“This is a very important recognition for the excellent surgical care that occurs at Upstate Community Hospital,” said Flavia Soto, MD, FACS, FASMBS, ABOM Diplomate and chief of surgery at Upstate Community Hospital.

The ACS NSQIP recognition program commends a select group of hospitals for achieving a meritorious score in either an “all cases” category or a category that includes only “high risk” cases. Upstate Community Hospital has been recognized on the “all cases” meritorious list. The score is determined using outcome performances related to patient management in the following eight clinical areas: mortality, unplanned intubation, ventilator for more than 48 hours, renal failure, cardiac incidents (cardiac arrest and myocardial infarction); respiratory (pneumonia); SSI (surgical site infections-superficial and deep incisional and organ-space SSIs); or urinary tract infection. 

The 89 commended hospitals, including Upstate Community Hospital, achieved the distinction based on outstanding composite quality score across those eight areas.

In 2019, 4,215 surgeries were performed at Upstate Community Hospital. That includes emergency surgeries as well as inpatient and outpatient procedures. The ACS NSQIP designation illustrates the hospital’s commitment to safety and quality care, Soto said.

“We’re doing a terrific job concentrating our efforts in safety, quality and high standards in order to deliver excellent care for our patients,” Soto said. “This recognition from ACS NSQIP is evidence that we can deliver excellent care in any type of case from all of the different specialties that we offer. We are reporting unbiased data to this database, which is what they are using, to tell the public that we are safe and can deliver high-quality excellent care.”

ACS NSQIP is the only nationally validated quality improvement program that measures and enhances the care of surgical patients. This program measures actual surgical results 30 days postoperatively as well as risk adjusts patient characteristics to compensate for differences among patient populations and acuity levels. The goal of ACS NSQIP is to reduce surgical morbidity (infection or illness related to a surgical procedure) and surgical mortality (death related to a surgical procedure) and to provide a firm foundation for surgeons to apply what is known as the “best scientific evidence” to the practice of surgery. Furthermore, when adverse effects from surgical procedures are reduced and/or eliminated, a reduction in health care costs follows. ACS NSQIP is a major program of the ACS and is used in nearly 850 adult or pediatric hospitals.

The American College of Surgeons is a scientific and educational organization of surgeons that was founded in 1913 to raise the standards of surgical practice and to improve the care of the surgical patient.  The College is dedicated to the ethical and competent practice of surgery. Its achievements have significantly influenced the course of scientific surgery in America and have established it as an important advocate for all surgical patients.  The College has more than 82,000 members and it is the largest organization of surgeons in the world.

Top