Quit Smoking Before Surgery Program

The American College of Surgeons (ACS) Quit Smoking Before Surgery Program offers you all of the resources you need to implement a smoking cessation program in your surgical practice. These resources include a one-hour AMA PRA Category 1 credit™ professional e-learning program on how to implement and code for a smoking cessation program in your practice, an updated Quit Smoking patient handout, and more.

Smoking before and after surgery has been associated with increased postoperative complications, increased hospital costs, and more frequent use of medical resources. Tobacco cessation has been prioritized as a quality improvement performance measure by The Joint Commission and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Surgeons have an active role in smoking cessation counseling and this series of resources—including the new ACS position statement—support the surgical community with focused resources on best practice methods for communicating smoking cessation to patients.

• It Pays for Your Patients to Quit Smoking Before Surgery: Outcomes, Interventions, and Reimbursement is a one-hour e-learning program worth 1 AMA PRA Category 1 credit^™ that may help in fulfilling patient safety/risk management requirements. For surgical practitioners, this program details the effects of nicotine and smoking on surgical outcomes, the benefits of counseling and pharmacotherapy, and the appropriate codes and reimbursement benefits for smoking cessation counseling, and resources for surgeons and patients.
• A four-page Quit Smoking Before Your Operation patient education resource that includes the impact of smoking on surgical outcomes and an action plan for quitting.
• The Statement on the Effects of Tobacco Use on Surgical Complications and the Utility of Smoking Cessation Counseling issued by the ACS in August 2014
• “ACS commemorates 50-year anniversary of Surgeon General’s report on smoking and health” published in the August 2014 issue of the ACS Bulletin
• A professional survey
• A patient evaluation
• Surgical Patient Education Smoking Cessation Work Group and Research
• Helping Patients Quit – Partnership for Prevention
• “Smoking Cessation and the Surgical Patient,” an ACS-sponsored Webcast aired on The Recovery Room, February 26, 2014