• Melinda Maggard-Gibbons.
• VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System, Los Angeles, California, USA Department of Surgery, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, Los Angeles, California, USA Department of Surgery, Olive View-UCLA Medical Center, Sylmar, California, USA.
• BMJ Qual Saf. 2014 Jul 1;23(7):589-99.

AbstractPostoperative adverse events occur all too commonly and contribute greatly to our large and increasing healthcare costs. Surgeons, as well as hospitals, need to know their own outcomes in order to recognise areas that need improvement before they can work towards reducing complications. In the USA, the American College of Surgeons National Surgical Quality Improvement Project (ACS NSQIP) collects clinical data that provide benchmarks for providers and hospitals. This review summarises the history of ACS NSQIP and its components, and describes the evidence that feeding outcomes back to providers, along with real-time comparisons with other hospital rates, leads to quality improvement, better patient outcomes, cost savings and overall improved patient safety. The potential harms and limitations of the program are discussed.Published by the BMJ Publishing Group Limited. For permission to use (where not already granted under a licence) please go to http://group.bmj.com/group/rights-licensing/permissions.

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