Beyond Surgical Coverage – How Surgical Affiliates Supports Quality and Efficiency

Surgical Affiliates surgicalist programs are meeting a significant need in hospitals across the nation with an advanced acute care surgical model. Our model delivers the highest level of 24/7 trauma and emergency general surgical care to patients.  The core focus of our surgicalist programs is to help hospitals close critical gaps in emergency surgical care. In addition, the comprehensive practice management support we provide to our hospital partners is an intrinsic part of our acute care surgical model that continuously drives quality improvements and operational efficiency – impacting the entire organization.

Local Medical Director
Each of our surgicalist programs is supported and led by a local medical director focused on maintaining high-quality standards and efficient clinic operations – alleviating administrative duties from the surgical team and allowing surgeons to focus more of their time on patient care.  Highly credentialed surgeons with strong leadership experience, our local medical directors play an important role in facilitating quality improvements at every level of the program.  Surgical Affiliates medical directors also receive administrative and management support from our practice management team, comprised of experienced trauma and critical care nurse managers, nationally recognized surgeon leaders, and healthcare executives.

Our local medical directors and practice management team continuously work to identify opportunities to enhance program performance and improve patient care. Local medical directors are actively engaged in ensuring the highest level of operational efficiency and quality through ongoing activities such as:

• Working closely with the Surgical Affiliates Chief Medical Officer (CMO) to develop ongoing quality improvement projects and quality review
• Regularly interfacing with local providers
• Representing our surgical programs while serving on hospital committees
• Ensuring standardization of care with development of practice management guidelines
• Providing practice updates to ensure surgeon practices are meeting current standards through monthly meetings, literature and case reviews

Quality Management
Our hospital partners benefit from our unrelenting focus on quality management – leading to improved outcomes for patients and a “halo effect” that often results in elevated performance in multiple departments throughout the organization.  Because providing the highest quality of patient care is central to our mission, Surgical Affiliates leverages our expertise in developing and managing trauma center performance improvement programs as required by the American College of Surgeons.

• With the leadership of the local medical director and Surgical Affiliates CMO, the quality improvement programs we establish are focused on reducing variability in surgical outcomes and identifying best practices to improve our care. We utilize fundamental principles to reinforce quality that includes recognizing variabilities and inefficiencies in order to establish corrective action plans.
• Also, our robust analytic infrastructure supports our programs with the tools to benchmark performance, establish performance targets in conjunction with hospital metric development, and drive improvement initiatives in an effort to standardize best practices across our programs, such as utilizing the latest evidence-based practices to ensure accurate handoff and provide the highest quality of surgical care. As a growing body of evidence in healthcare shows, standardizing processes and functions reduces mistakes and improves efficiency – leading to better patient outcomes and improved hospital performance.