Joe DiMaggio Childrens Hospital Receives Highest Surgical Verification American College of Surgeons

What makes surgery at a pediatric hospital top-notch? According to the American College of Surgeons, it is a commitment to quality care, appropriately and highly trained staff, participation in cutting-edge research, and leadership from surgeons who review the services’ surgical outcomes throughout the year. That commitment extends to meeting every child’s individual surgical needs with a care environment that offers optimal pediatric resources.

Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital personifies this commitment and was recently designated Level I Children’s Surgery Verification from the American College of Surgeons (ACS) Children’s Surgery Verification (CSV) Program. That is ACS’s highest designation provided to a surgical center for its excellence in delivering care and continuous improvement to enhancing the structure, process and patient outcomes. As part of this designation, the hospital also participates in a national surgery registry where best practices are shared with other programs.

“Achieving Level I speaks to the caliber of the surgical team at Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital and attests to our capability for meeting the most complex surgical needs of our pediatric community,” said Jill Whitehouse, MD, vice-chief, Pediatric General Surgery, Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital. “It also demonstrates our team’s passion for excellence and our dedication to safety and quality that extends to every patient we touch.”

Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital is one of only two in the state with Level I verification, and joins an elite list of 33 hospitals nationwide with this honor. The CSV program is based on other nationally recognized American College of Surgeons quality improvement programs that have measurably improved surgical quality and have prevented complications, reduced costs and saved lives. CSV standards ensure that children facing 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.

“This is an amazing achievement from our surgical team, a well-deserved recognition for the hospital and a major benefit to our community,” said Caitlin Stella, CEO, Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital.

The ACS CSV program was developed to improve the quality of children’s surgical care by creating a system that allows for a prospective match of every child’s individual surgical needs with a care environment that has optimal pediatric resources. Verified centers must meet criteria outlined in the standards document, Optimal Resources for Children’s Surgical Care 2015.

After submitting an application, centers seeking verification undergo an extensive site visit by an ACS team of surveyors. The surveyor teams consist of experienced children’s surgeons, anesthesiologists, and nurses who review the center's structure, process, and clinical outcomes data. The current Optimal Resources for Children’s Surgical Care manual drives the application and is used as a guideline in conducting the survey.