CHICAGO — A new clinical outcomes report from the American College of Surgeons (ACS) National Surgical Quality Improvement Program (NSQIP) provides hospitals, for the first time, with risk-adjusted, benchmarked data for emergency general surgery, advancing data-driven quality improvement in one of the most complex and time-sensitive areas of patient care.
“This new report represents an important milestone for improving emergency general surgery care at both the hospital and patient level,” said Mike Wandling, MD, MS, FACS, chair of the ACS Emergency General Surgery Data Committee and chief of trauma at The University of Texas - Houston. “By providing clinically relevant data, the report allows hospitals to more accurately evaluate their performance in emergency general surgery, both internally and against peer institutions, while accounting for differences in patient risk profiles and case complexity. Such data will enable hospitals to benchmark performance, optimize care pathways, and foster a multidisciplinary approach to quality improvement.”
Emergency general surgery refers to the treatment of a broad range of urgent conditions — such as appendicitis, bowel obstruction, diverticulitis, and gallbladder disease — that require prompt intervention to prevent serious complications or death. Patients undergoing emergency general surgery account for more than 4 million hospital admissions annually and contribute to over 50% of all operative mortality rates in the United States.
Expanding Insights with Comprehensive Data
The April 2026 report includes data on more than 32,000 emergency general surgery cases from 86 participating hospitals. Case data spans from July 1, 2024, to June 30, 2025. This release introduces risk-adjusted models for select outcome measures across high-volume emergency general surgery diagnoses, for both operative and non-operative cases.
Building on prior releases, this report includes several key features designed to improve usability and clinical relevance.
- Risk-adjusted models: Risk and reliability adjustment methods are critical to providing meaningful comparisons across hospitals. These methods account for patients’ illness severity and complexity, as well as hospital volumes, to provide more reliable comparisons of hospital quality and performance.
- Outcomes on Operative and Non-Operative Cases: Capturing non-operative cases represents an important expansion for ACS NSQIP and is crucial for a comprehensive evaluation of emergency general surgical care. Including non-operative cases in the risk-adjusted reports provides a more complete and accurate representation of the emergency general surgery patient population, enabling hospitals to better identify care gaps, evaluate outcomes beyond the operating room, and target quality improvement efforts where they are often most needed.
- Timeliness of Care: Timeliness and duration measures are important indicators of emergency general surgery care delivery. Standardized collection of these metrics enables hospitals to benchmark performance, evaluate variation in care processes, and identify opportunities for targeted quality improvement initiatives.
The report is available to hospitals participating in the NSQIP emergency general surgery module. Participation in the module is available at no additional cost to current NSQIP participants or as a standalone registry for hospitals participating in the Emergency General Surgery (EGS) Verification Program, a joint initiative between the ACS and the American Association for the Surgery of Trauma that establishes rigorous standards for emergency general surgery care. Participating sites can view their institution-specific reports directly through the NSQIP resource portal.
“Both the Emergency General Surgery Verification Program and risk-adjusted report allow hospitals to organize and improve care through a proven, evidence-based framework,” said Stephanie Savage, MD, MS, FACS, chair of the ACS Emergency General Surgery Taskforce and director of Emergency General Surgery at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “By providing hospitals with a comprehensive, benchmarked view of emergency surgery performance, and linking performance with measurable outcomes, we can help hospitals identify areas for improvement and support them in providing the highest-quality emergency general surgery care.”
A Legacy of Quality Improvement
The ACS NSQIP emergency general surgery module traces its roots to a pilot program launched in 2015 with thirteen hospitals across the United States and Canada. The program’s success in collecting high-quality data led to the development of the targeted emergency general surgery module within the NSQIP registry. The report has since evolved to support hospitals’ needs for a specialized, benchmarked dataset and complements the ACS EGS Verification Program.
Hospitals interested in participating in NSQIP or becoming verified by the EGS Verification Program can email egs@facs.org or visit the ACS website for more information.
