Identifying and defining complications of dermatologic surgery to be tracked in the American College of Mohs Surgery (ACMS) Registry

Abstract

Background: In recent years, increasing emphasis has been placed on value-based health care delivery. Dermatology must develop performance measures to judge the quality of services provided. The implementation of a national complication registry is one such method of tracking surgical outcomes and monitoring the safety of the specialty.

Objective: The purpose of this study was to define critical outcome measures to be included in the complications registry of the American College of Mohs Surgery (ACMS).

Methods: A Delphi process was used to reach consensus on the complications to be recorded.

Results: Four major and one minor complications were selected: death, bleeding requiring additional intervention, functional loss attributable to surgery, hospitalization for an operative complication, and surgical site infection.

Limitations: This article addresses only one aspect of registry development: identifying and defining surgical complications.

Conclusion: The ACMS Registry aims to gather data to monitor the safety and value of dermatologic surgery. Determining and defining the outcomes to be included in the registry is an important foundation toward this endeavor.

Keywords: American College of Mohs Surgery; Mohs; complications; dermatologic surgery; outcome measures; registry; value-based health care.