Abstract
Patients expect high-quality surgical care and increasingly are looking for ways to
assess the quality of the surgeon they are seeing, but quality measurement is often
more complicated than one might expect. Measurement of individual surgeon quality
in a manner that allows for comparison among surgeons is particularly difficult. While
the concept of measuring individual surgeon quality has a long history, technology
now allows for new and innovative ways to measure and achieve surgical excellence.
However, some recent efforts to make surgeon-level quality data publicly available
have highlighted the challenges of this work. Through this chapter, the reader will
be introduced to a brief history of surgical quality measurement, learn about the
current state of quality measurement, and get a glimpse into what the future holds.
Keywords
surgical quality - technical skills - video-based assessment - surgical quality
