Registry Partners recently had the honor of attending the American College of Surgeons (ACS) 2021 Virtual Trauma Quality Improvement Program (TQIP) Annual Conference. Held Nov. 15 – Nov. 17, over 2000 trauma medical directors, program managers, coordinators, PI clinicians, and registrars came together virtually in a live format to present upcoming ACS trauma changes, research, challenges, and solutions. The conference website was easy to navigate and well organized. Live conference features including chat, polling, and ask the speaker allowed attendees to be interactive with both the presenters and other attendees from around the world.
Dr. Avery Nathens, Medical Director of Trauma Quality Programs, kicked off this year’s conference with program updates highlighting some of the exciting new initiatives within the ACS Trauma Quality Programs. One new initiative includes the ACS Quality Improvement Course, a six-module course that will be able to be completed in multiple formats. During the closing session, Dr. Avery also detailed The new trauma center verification standards of the American College of Surgeons (ACS), which is scheduled to be released in March 2022.
Keeping with the focus of the conference “Change,” Keynote speaker Chip Heath, Professor of Organizational Behavior at Stanford Graduate School of Business, spoke in-depth about the challenges of change and how to overcome them. Heath used the elephant and rider analogy for his presentation. This analogy proposes that everyone is both the rider, which represents the rational thinker and the evidence-based decision-maker, and the elephant, the emotional player. Although the rider appears to lead the elephant, the six-ton elephant can overpower the rider at any time. The rider can’t force the elephant to move unless he appeals to and motivates them.
We had several days that consisted of various sessions on the following important topics:
- Trauma program resource support
- Optimizing Clinical and Claims Data
- 2022 National Trauma Data Standard (NTDS) changes
- Best Practice Guidelines for Spine Injury
- Using Data to Effect Lasting Change
- Tools to Advance Data Quality
- Pediatric Trauma
- Mortality Reporting System
This year’s conference had great success in the virtual environment. We look forward to attending the conference again next year.