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Center for Clinical Effectiveness in Surgery

Outcomes research is a relatively new but quickly growing discipline in which specially trained physicians and health care experts use analytic tools from disciplines such as epidemiology, biostatistics, health services research, psychology and sociology to examine, measure and improve the structures, processes and outcomes of care. Outcomes research is first and foremost a method of improving the quality of patient care, which manifests itself in numerous ways, including quantifiable information about how well medical procedures work and how patients value medical interventions and their consequences.

In fulfillment of our mission to improve the quality of surgical care, the Massachusetts General Hospital Department of Surgery's Surgical Outcomes Program is actively developing a Center in which a diverse group of scientists and clinician-scholars will be trained in the theory and language of outcomes research, and will develop quality academic research to study surgical outcomes. The Department of Surgery has been accepted to participate as a beta set for the National Surgical Quality Improvement Program (NSQIP). NSQIP is the first national, validated, outcome-based, risk-adjusted and peer-controlled program for the measurement and enhancement of the quality of surgical care. Currently, the NSQIP incorporates 128 Veterans Affairs Medical Centers and ten beta sites in the non-government sector.

Visit the CCCES web site.

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