Moving the needle toward high-quality pediatric surgical care: How can we achieve this goal through prioritization, measurement and more effective collaboration?

Over the past decade, the American College of Surgeons Pediatric National Surgical Quality Improvement Program (NSQIP-Pediatric) has greatly improved upon our ability to measure, benchmark and compare outcomes as they relate to pediatric surgical care. Several factors have served to mold the program's evolution and data collection paradigm over time. These have included a broader understanding of what quality measures should be captured and compared from the perspectives of different stakeholders, identification of conditions where quality and process improvement efforts may have the greatest relative impact from a public health perspective, and increasing evidence in support of collaborative networks to accelerate quality improvement through the dissemination of best practices. The purpose of today's lecture is to review these factors in the context of a comprehensive road map for optimizing the quality of pediatric surgical care, and the role that NSQIP-Pediatric has and will continue to play as the foundation supporting this road map.