Some of the benefits to quality care provision ensuing from participation in the American College of Surgeons (ACS) and SVS Vascular Verification Program (Vascular-VP) could be almost immediate.
This is among the insights set to feature during one of the most hotly-anticipated insertions on the VAM schedule.
SVS President-elect Matthew Eagleton, MD, who has made the program the subject of this year’s E. Stanley Crawford Critical Issues Forum on Wednesday, June 19 (11:15 a.m. in the West Building, Level 3, Skyline Ballroom), was speaking to VS@VAM ahead of the six-surgeon Crawford panel’s dissection of the Vascular-VP and discussion of why it matters to the improvement of quality in vascular care under the title, Quality Care Everywhere.
“I think at individual sites, you will even see the effects at the beginning of the process,” Eagleton says. “In the case of those involved in the inpatient program, the minute they start looking at—and questioning—what they are doing at their own organizations, they might see that there are lot of things that we take for granted, that we just assume may be happening, or in place, that many not be. So, with some of the changes that will need to occur at each location in order to meet verification status, there will be an immediate fix. When will we see that trickle down into measurable data changes that we can use for analysis of patient care, patient safety? That will probably take a couple of years until we see something like that.”
Eagleton’s panel includes five colleagues immersed in the conception and birth of the ACS-SVS Vascular-VP. The contingent includes Clifford Y. Ko, MD, the director of the Division of Research and Optimal Patient Care at the ACS; Anton N. Sidawy, MD, a former SVS president; R. Clement Darling III, MD, another former SVS president; William P. Shutze, MD, current SVS secretary; and Dennis Gable, MD, from Texas Vascular Associates of Dallas and Plano.
“One of the things we always try to achieve in vascular surgery is to provide patients with quality care,” explains Eagleton. “For the public, what does that mean? How do they know a location they can go to receive care is considered a quality location? That’s what this forum is about—highlighting a program that was put together in conjunction with the ACS so that we have a verification program that can provide the blueprint for what a quality program should look like within an organization.”
Ko, who oversees quality programs at the ACS, will introduce how such programs have proven successful, says Eagleton. Sidawy, chair of the Vascular-VP Steering Committee, “has been instrumental in shepherding the relationship between the ACS and the SVS” in establishing a “functional program.”
Darling will discuss the inpatient program, on which he has been a leading figure, while Shutze will dissect efforts put in to get the outpatient version off the ground. Gable, meanwhile, will talk about his personal experience implementing the Vascular-VP on his own vascular surgery service line.
“We are using this as an opportunity to educate our members about these programs, why it may be important to them and how can they get involved in utilizing them best in order to improve the quality at their locations.”
