The South Carolina Surgical Quality Collaborative (SCSQC) is a regional surgical quality collaborative focused on improving general surgery outcomes in South Carolina. It is a joint effort that brings together the skills and resources of our organization, the South Carolina Hospital Association, and the Blue Cross Blue Shield of SC Foundation to create a web-based data collection system to provide real-time outcomes data to participating surgeons and to establish a supportive network for sharing best practices and promoting data-driven quality improvement.
Mark Lockett M.D. of the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) published two papers in The American Surgeon this year, both on the work being done by the collaborative, of which he's a major part. In the first, titled A New Effort to Improve Surgical Outcomes in South Carolina, Lockett writes of SCSQC's first year.
"Early results on these efforts are encouraging," he writes. Read the fascinating paper (downloadable below) to learn more.
His next paper, titled South Carolina Surgical Quality Collaborative: Colon Surgery Outcomes Vary by Age and Race, he writes that "Identifying disparities in surgical outcomes among patient populations may help hospitals target patients at highest risk for complications...Using SCSQC data, we reviewed colon surgery outcomes to determine whether disparities exist between specific patient populations.
What were those results and how are they being interpreted? Find out by reading the full paper, also available below.
A New Effort to Improve Surgical Outcomes in South Carolina
