Morristown Medical Center One of 66 Hospitals in Nation to Achieve “Meritorious” Outcome for Surgical Patient Care

Morristown Medical Center, part of Atlantic Health System, today announced that The American College of Surgeons National Surgical Quality Improvement Program (ACS NSQIP®) has recognized it as one of only 66 hospitals in the nation to achieve “meritorious” outcomes for surgical patient care. Overlook Medical Center, also part of Atlantic Health System, achieved a “meritorious” outcome as well.

Under the program, hospitals are required to track the outcomes of inpatient and outpatient surgical procedures and collect data about patient safety and the quality of surgical care improvements for the performance period of January 1, 2016 – December 31, 2016.

“Our voluntary participation in this program continues to ensure we are providing safe, high-quality surgical care that reduces risk for our patients, while facilitating continuous, real-time best practices for our surgeons and medical staff,” said Rolando H. Rolandelli, MD, FACS, chairman of the Department of Surgery at Morristown Medical Center. “The value of this program is that it provides our surgeons with a valid comparison their patients’ outcomes in specific areas (like cardiac or respiratory cases) compared to those of surgeons in other hospitals.”

Morristown Medical Center achieved the distinction based on their outstanding composite quality score across the eight clinical areas: mortality, unplanned intubation, ventilator > 48 hours, renal failure, cardiac incidents (cardiac arrest and myocardial infarction); respiratory (pneumonia); SSI (surgical site infections-superficial and deep incisional and organ-space SSIs); and urinary tract infection.

Over the past few years, Morristown Medical Center has invested significantly in its surgical program, which specializes in minimally-invasive surgery, robotic surgery, cardiac, and orthopedic surgery. Morristown Medical Center’s surgical care team includes fellowship-trained surgical specialists and pediatric surgeons.

The medical center performs nearly 31,000 surgeries each year, and its cardiac and orthopedic surgery programs have been recognized nationally by US News and World Report for seven and five consecutive years, respectively. It is verified as a Level I Regional Trauma Center by the American College of Surgeons and designated a Level II Trauma Center by the state of New Jersey. The medical center has 29 operating rooms onsite, and an additional operating and minor procedure spaces located across the street at 111 Madison Avenue, Morristown.

Morristown Medical Center has been previously recognized for calendar years 2009, 2012, and 2013.

For more information about surgery at Morristown Medical Center, visit http://www.atlantichealth.org/morristown/our-services/surgery.html.

About the ACS NSQIP Recognition Program

Risk-adjusted data from the July 2017 ACS NSQIP Semiannual Report, which presents data from the 2016 calendar year, were used to determine which hospitals demonstrated meritorious outcomes.

ACS NSQIP is the only nationally validated quality improvement program that measures and enhances the care of surgical patients. This program measures the actual surgical results 30 days postoperatively as well as risk adjusts patient characteristics to compensate for differences among patient populations and acuity levels.

The goal of ACS NSQIP is to reduce surgical morbidity (infection or illness related to a surgical procedure) and surgical mortality (death related to a surgical procedure) and to provide a firm foundation for surgeons to apply what is known as the “best scientific evidence” to the practice of surgery.

Furthermore, when adverse effects from surgical procedures are reduced and/or eliminated, a reduction in health care costs follows. ACS NSQIP is a major program of the American College of Surgeons and is currently used in nearly 800 adult and pediatric hospitals.