Evolution of the American College of Surgeons Children's Surgery Verification Program: Implications for optimizing multidisciplinary surgical care of the pediatric patient

Douglas C Barnhart; Mary E Fallat; Catherine A Grant; Constance S Houck; Jayant K Deshpande; Lynn Haas; Clifford Y Ko; Keith T Oldham

doi:10.1016/j.sempedsurg.2023.151276

Evolution of the American College of Surgeons Children's Surgery Verification Program: Implications for optimizing multidisciplinary surgical care of the pediatric patient

Semin Pediatr Surg. 2023 Apr;32(2):151276. doi: 10.1016/j.sempedsurg.2023.151276. Epub 2023 Apr 11.

Authors

Douglas C Barnhart¹, Mary E Fallat², Catherine A Grant³, Constance S Houck⁴, Jayant K Deshpande⁵, Lynn Haas⁶, Clifford Y Ko³, Keith T Oldham⁷

Affiliations

¹ Division of Pediatric Surgery, Primary Children's Hospital, University of Utah School of Medicine, Salt Lake City, UT, USA. Electronic address: Douglas.Barnhart@utah.edu.
² Department of Surgery, Norton Children's Hospital, University of Louisville, Louisville, KY, USA.
³ Division of Research and Optimal Patient Care, American College of Surgeons, Chicago, IL, USA.
⁴ Department of Anesthesia, Boston Children's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA.
⁵ Nemours Children's Hospital Orlando, University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL, USA.
⁶ Cincinnati Children's Hospital, Cincinnati, OH, USA.
⁷ Medical College of Wisconsin, Children's Hospital Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI, USA.

PMID: 37150635
DOI: 10.1016/j.sempedsurg.2023.151276

Abstract

The Children's Surgery Verification Program of the American College of Surgeons began in 2016 based on the standards created by the Task Force for Children's Surgery. This program seeks to improve the surgical care of children by assuring the appropriate resources and robust performance improvement programs at participating centers. Three levels of centers with defined scopes of practice and matching resources are defined. Since its inception more than 50 center have been verified. A specialty hospital program was launched in 2019. The standards for all hospitals were revised in 2021 based on lessons learned. In this article the leaders of the program discuss the development, areas of greatest impact and future directions of the program.

Keywords: Children's Surgery Verification Program; Pediatric surgery; Quality improvement.

MeSH terms

Child
Hospitals, Pediatric
Humans
Surgeons*
United States