University of Washington Selects Platform to Evaluate Surgeons

Delving into the surgeon measurement arena, the University of Washington Medical School’s Department of Orthopedics will be the first orthopedic program in the U.S. to utilize C-SATS, a platform to appraise and improve surgeon performance.

According to the March 31, 2016 news release, “The University of Washington Medical School’s Department of Orthopedics will first use the C-SATS platform to evaluate videos of arthroscopic surgery. This type of surgery, which involves a patient’s joints, is a large and growing area of medicine because of our aging—yet active—population. It’s also an area where surgery can be elective, so patients are financially incentivized to ensure that they have the best surgeon. The agreement with the University of Washington’s Department of Orthopedics represents the first time that the C-SATS solution will be used in the field of orthopedics.”

“We’re very pleased that both departments at the University of Washington Medical School chose C-SATS, ” says Derek Streat, CEO of C-SATS, “and they made this choice because they want to ensure the best orthopedic and urology surgeons.”

Indeed, the current state of technical skills assessment in medicine is extremely expensive, time-intensive and subjective, and C-SATS’ scalable solution—which includes the collection and uploading of surgical videos to a secure cloud service—utilizes a unique combination of distributed experts and extra-institutional reviewers to assess technical performance with accuracy that’s equivalent to gold standards.

“Our priority is surgical excellence. To measure technical proficiency improves our training and provides better surgeons to our patients, ” explains John Green, M.D. at the University of Washington Medical School’s Department of Orthopedics.

C-SATS Chief Medical Officer Thomas Lendvay, M.D., told OTW, “Orthopedic surgeons have been at the forefront of proficiency-based education in residency training, yet upon graduation, there are few continuing technical skills improvement opportunities beyond hands-on courses at conferences. Orthopedic surgeons have also been leading adopters of new surgical hardware technologies that an individual surgeon may not have been exposed to in residency training. For these reasons, methods that objectively quantify skill, as well as provide meaningful feedback for improvement opportunities may lead to improved patient outcomes and surgeon satisfaction. The latter stems from the stresses that are experienced after surgical complications occur, and the former is supported by evidence that the technical skill of the surgeon directly impacts his/her patient outcomes. Recent evidence that C-SATS methodologies for arthroscopy performance correlate with expert peer review provides a tremendous opportunity to assist practicing surgeons interested in surgical technique improvement.”

“Orthopedic surgery is a highly technical profession and as reimbursement becomes increasingly linked to performance and quality, orthopedic surgeons will look for avenues to continuously improve their craft. Unfortunately, the bandwidth of peers to review performances either in person or by blinded video review is limited, thus methods for scaling rapid, accurate technical skills feedback are imperative to keep pace with the increasing demand for objective feedback.”