this care in an environment
with resources optimal for
his/her individual needs.”
“A large portion of children’s
surgical care is provided in
nonspecialized environments
in the U.S. today,” he added.
“A specialized environment is
associated with better clinical
outcomes for some patients,”
especially neonates and children
needing operations for congenital
heart conditions and trauma, as
well as some relatively simple
pediatric surgical problems,
such as appendicitis in children
ages five and younger.
The overriding principle of
the CSV is tiered accreditation for
hospitals, much like the system
used to accredit trauma centers;
that is, Level III centers would
be accredited only to provide
low-risk procedures by single
specialty, whereas Level I centers
would be verified as meeting
the program’s standards for
complex procedures and diseases
that require multidisciplinary
care. The program officially
launched in January.
Geriatric surgery
“Starting in 2012, 10,000 people
will turn 65 each day. By 2030,
20 percent of the population
will be over 65 years old, and by
2050, nearly 20 million people
will be older than 85 years of
age,” said Ronnie A. Rosenthal,
MS, MD, FACS, Co-Principal
Investigator, the Coalition for
Quality in Geriatric Surgery
(CQGS) Project. “More than
50 percent of people older
than 65 years old will require
some surgical procedure in the
remainder of their lifetime.”
With this awareness in
mind, the ACS and other
stakeholders established the
CQGS with funding from The
John A. Hartford Foundation.
The goals of the CQGS are
to engage stakeholders, set
standards, develop measures
that matter to patients, develop
a verification process to ensure
quality, educate patients and
providers, pilot the program,
and launch a Geriatric Surgery
Quality Campaign. Stakeholder
organizations represent patients
and families, advocacy and
regulatory bodies, health care
professionals, and medical
and surgical specialties.
The CQGS has conducted
field visits at 11 hospitals in seven
U.S. cities, said Dr. Rosenthal,
Co-Chair of the CQGS Standards
Subcommittee. More than 100
hospital administrators, quality
and safety team members,
frontline providers, care
transition team members, and
patient navigators participated
in interviews. The CQGS found
that all of these providers share
the perception that older adults
require special care, but they were
unclear what that meant. The
subcommittee recently began
beta testing standards of care.
Keynote Address: Resilience
According to Susan D. Moffat-Bruce, MD, PhD, FACS, professor
of surgery, division of thoracic
surgery, and professor of
biomedical informatics and
molecular virology, immunology,
and medical genetics, The Ohio
State University, Columbus,
resilience is the ability to
experience a significant
loss and find a way to make
something good come of it.
An individual who exemplifies
resilience, she said, is Blake
Haxton, JD, who lost both of his
legs to necrotizing fasciitis.
During his keynote address,
Mr. Haxton described his journey
from going to the local hospital’s
emergency department with
debilitating swelling and redness
in his right leg to reclaiming
his identity. After more than
three months of intensive
treatment and rehabilitation,
Mr. Haxton had defied the odds
and proven his body’s resilience
throughout the ordeal. The
question now was, what would
someone who had previously
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Dr. Wick Dr. Rosenthal Mr. Haxton Dr. Morton