Rochester, NY: Clifton Springs Hospital & Clinic (CSHC) and Newark-Wayne Community Hospital (NWCH) have achieved Level 1—Comprehensive Excellence verification status from the Geriatric Surgery Verification Program (GSV), a quality program of the American College of Surgeons (ACS). A hospital with Level 1 verification status recognizes its commitment to providing optimal care for its older adult surgical patients by meeting the GSV’s program standards. GSV Program verification is granted only to those hospitals that are dedicated to providing the best possible surgical care for older adults.
To attain this level of verification, GSV Program standards must be in place and verified across one or more surgical specialties and must reach 50 percent or more of the hospital’s total population of eligible surgical patients aged 75 years or older. These standards ensure that older adults undergoing surgery receive care under a multidisciplinary program with quality improvement and safety processes, data collection, and appropriate resources provided to them as patients at the hospital.
Only five hospitals in the country have achieved Level 1- Comprehensive Excellence verification status from the GSV Program- three are in the RRH system. Unity Hospital achieved it in 2020, and now CSHC and NWCH are also the only rural hospitals to obtain the same verification. The other two hospitals are in California and Colorado.
In order to become verified, CSHC and NWCH participated in a site review process by an ACS team of reviewers consisting of experienced experts in geriatric care who reviewed the hospital’s structure, process, and clinical outcomes data. The current standards document, Optimal Resources for Geriatric Surgery, drives the application and is used as a guideline in the review.
As a verified geriatric surgery facility, the surgical care team at CSHC and NWCH are implementing the program standards to continuously make the most effective use of surgical care for a vulnerable aging population. These standards are evidence-based and define resources and processes that hospitals must have in place to perform operations effectively, efficiently, and safely for older adults. The standards are also patient-centered so hospitals can also always prioritize what matters most to individual patients regarding their needs and treatment goals.
The standardized program includes recommendations for improving communications between patients and their health care team; managing medications; screening for cognitive, nutrition, and mobility decline; and ensuring proper staffing is in place, among other concerns.
“Attaining Level 1 GSV designation is a major achievement for not only Newark Wayne and Clifton Springs Hospitals, but also for the American College of Surgeons,” said Dr. Matthew Schiralli, director of the geriatric program and Rochester Regional Health’s chief of surgery, Eastern Region. “With these hospital verifications we have proven that ACS-sponsored quality care programs can be effectively rolled out in small and rural hospitals in addition to the larger ones where they were developed. A new standard of surgical care for the elderly has been created at Newark and Clifton, raising the bar for everyone.”
The GSV program provides the structure and resources to develop and maintain a high-quality of geriatric surgical care by creating a system that allows for a prospective match of every older adult’s individual surgical needs with a care environment that has optimal resources for the patients undergoing inpatient surgery.
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About the American College of Surgeons Geriatric Surgery Verification (ACS GSV) Program
Introduced July 2019, the ACS GSV program, provides a standardized surgical quality improvement framework for optimal care of the geriatric surgical patient, generalizable to hospitals regardless of size, location, or teaching status. Verified hospitals implement program standards for a multidisciplinary team approach addressing preoperative work-up, postoperative management, care transition, data collection, quality improvement, professional and community outreach, and research. With support from The John A. Hartford Foundation, the standards were collaboratively developed by the ACS Coalition for Quality in Geriatric Surgery Project, involving more than 50 stakeholder organizations that represent the needs of older patients and families, advocacy and regulatory groups, health care professionals, and multiple medical and surgical specialties.
Rochester Regional Health is an integrated health services organization serving the people of Western New York, the Finger Lakes, and beyond. The system includes five hospitals; primary and specialty practices, rehabilitation centers, ambulatory campuses and urgent care facilities; innovative senior services, facilities and independent housing; a wide range of behavioral health services; and Rochester Regional Health Laboratories and ACM Global Laboratories, a global leader in patient and clinical trials. Rochester Regional Health is the region’s second-largest employer. Learn more at RochesterRegional.org.
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