Over the last year and a half, numerous stakeholders have united to help the ACS craft a new Strategic Plan, designed to advance ACS priorities and provide value to surgeons, the profession, and the patients they serve. Stakeholders have included the Board of Regents, Officers, representative Past Presidents, the Board of Governors, the Young Fellows Association, the Resident and Associate Society, committee leaders, executives, and staff.
The resulting Strategic Plan features four pillars and one foundational concept. Over the next few weeks, this series of articles will introduce each part of the Strategic Plan.
Pillar 1: Advance Patient-Centered Care and Surgical Quality
The purpose of this pillar is to advance surgical excellence and innovation, as well as empower healthcare professionals with data-driven insights so that high-quality care can be prioritized and patient trust enhanced.
Over the next year, this will include developing rural initiatives for cancer and trauma care, including new standards for Level IV rural trauma centers; integrating the National Accreditation Program on Breast Centers under the Commission on Cancer accreditation umbrella; and offering cancer accreditation to Canada for the first time.
In addition, ACS systems will be transformed to enhance access to real-time, data-driven insights for clinical use. One key effort is the new Clinical Data Strategy initiative, which was announced during the Quality and Safety Conference in July. The initiative is a multiyear effort that will use multiple technology companies to enhance automation and simplify data collection in hospitals. The initiative aims to reduce the workload associated with data collection and analysis, facilitating effective quality improvement efforts and optimal patient outcomes.
Other planned projects include modernizing Quality Program reporting tools, enhancing National Cancer Database outputs, and expanding variables in the National Surgical Quality Improvement (NSQIP) and the Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery Accreditation and Quality Improvement Programs (MBSAQIP).
This pillar also will help drive policies and programs that incentivize high-quality, data-informed, patient-centered care, including creating new calculators for opioid prescribing and cancer survival, public reporting of accreditation/verification data, and ongoing releases of updated cancer staging protocols and new cancer operative standards.
Finally, efforts will continue to enhance patient trust through patient education resources, patient awareness of the ACS, and position statements on injury prevention. Ongoing efforts also will engage surgeons from the OR to the C-suite to help ensure they understand the value of ACS Quality Programs and are incentivized to pursue high-quality, data-driven patient care.
Additional articles on the Strategic Plan will be published in the ACS Brief in the coming weeks.
Read more:
Introducing the New ACS Strategic Plan – Executive Director’s Update (July/August 2025 Bulletin)
