SGH has won recognition for achieving meritorious outcomes for surgical patient care in 2020 under a programme that uses evidence-based measures of evaluation developed by surgeons.

The recognition by the American College of Surgeons National Surgical Quality Improvement Program (ACS NSQIP) places SGH among world leaders for surgical outcomes. The NSQIP is based on clinical data direct from patients’ medical charts 30 days after surgery as well as risk-adjusts patient characteristics to compensate for differences among patient populations and acuity levels.

"Taking part in the NSQIP is an important way to safeguard well-being of our patients, by significantly improving the quality of our care.

"We wanted to have a methodology that uses robust, actionable data to measure and improve the quality of our patient care. The NSQIP fits the bill, as it is developed by surgeons who understand the realities of the operating theatre. It allows us to bench mark ourselves against the best hospitals globally using data that are risk-adjusted for our patients’ profile. This is unlike other methods of measuring hospital performance which are based on descriptive studies, peer reviews or patient satisfaction surveys," says Associate Prof Tan Hiang Khoon, Chairman of the Division of Surgery and Surgical Oncology in SGH and the National Cancer Centre Singapore.

SGH is among 90 hospitals commended, out of 706 hospitals which were evaluated for the 2020 list of meritorious hospitals.

SGH was assessed and recognised under the ‘high risk’ category. It had submitted outcome data for high risk cases for three consecutive years – 2018, 2019 and 2020, as required. Commended hospitals achieved the distinction based on their outstanding composite quality score across the following eight clinical areas.

SGH performs almost 10,000 day and inpatient surgeries each year. The high volume of procedures allows our surgeons to continually sharpen their skills, resulting in better outcomes for patients.