• Gail Darling, Richard Malthaner, John Dickie, Leigh McKnight, Cindy Nhan, Amber Hunter, Robin S McLeod, and Lung Cancer Surgery Expert Panel.
• Division of Thoracic Surgery, Department of Surgery, University Health Network, Toronto, Ontario, Canada; Department of Surgery, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Electronic address: gail.darling@uhn.ca.
• Ann. Thorac. Surg. 2014 Jul 1;98(1):183-90.

BackgroundThe aim of this project was to develop a set of quality indicators to assess surgical decision making in the care of patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).MethodsA multidisciplinary Expert Panel of 16 physicians used a modified Delphi process to identify quality indicators that evaluated the processes of care in patients with NSCLC. A systematic review identified potential indicators, which were rated on actionability, validity, usefulness, discriminability, and feasibility in two rounds of questionnaires. The first questionnaire was completed by the Expert Panel and by the larger thoracic surgical community of practice; the second questionnaire was sent to only the Expert Panel. Expert Panel members attended an in-person meeting to review the results of the two questionnaires and to compile the final list of indicators by consensus.ResultsFrom the literature review, 41 potential indicators were identified. An additional 16 indicators were suggested by the Expert Panel: 13 indicators in the two rounds of questionnaires and three after the discussion at the in-person meeting. One further indicator was identified after the in-person meeting. In the end, 17 indicators were chosen from seven domains: preoperative assessment, staging, surgical procedures, pathology, adjuvant therapy, surgical outcomes, and miscellaneousConclusionsBy use of a modified Delphi process, 17 indicators to assess the quality of processes of surgical care for patients with NSCLC were developed.Copyright © 2014 The Society of Thoracic Surgeons. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

13 keywords...

hide…