Fellows Awarded R01 Funding to Study Effectiveness of ACS Operative Standards for Cancer Surgery Manuals

A research team, led by Co-Principal Investigators Lesly Dossett, MD, MPH, FACS, from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, and Daniel Boffa, MD, FACS, from Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, was recently awarded R01 funding by the National Cancer Institute for their study, “Implementation and Effectiveness of the American College of Surgeons (ACS) Operative Standards Program.”

The grant comes in response to the relatively little attention that has been paid to the potential differences in cancer surgery technical quality—a gap meant to be addressed by the ACS-published Operative Standards for Cancer Surgery manuals. With these manuals, which cover 15 disease sites with the intent of improving surgical quality and outcomes, six standards were implemented by the Commission on Cancer (CoC) in 2020. The CoC expects its more than 1,400 accredited facilities to reach 80% adherence to these standards by the end of 2024.  

Drs. Dossett and Boffa will be joined by co-investigators Ronald Weigel, MD, FACS, Medical Director of ACS Cancer Programs, and Judy Boughey, chair of breast and melanoma surgical oncology at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. Working in collaboration with the ACS, this 5-year grant aims to:

• Evaluate the implementation of the CoC Operative Standards across cancer and hospital types
• Access guideline and organizational level barriers and facilitators of program implementation
• Gauge the impact of the CoC operative standards program on short-term cancer outcomes

Learn more about the Operative Standards manuals.