See First Four Hospitals Verified in New Vascular Verification Program

The ACS, with the Society for Vascular Surgery (SVS), has verified the first four hospitals as part of the recently launched Vascular Verification Program (Vascular-VP).

Vascular-VP is an ACS Quality Program developed with the SVS and leverages the strengths and expertise of the ACS and SVS to provide an evidence-driven, standardized pathway for instituting and growing a quality improvement and clinical care infrastructure within a hospital’s vascular program.

The newly verified hospitals are:

• Albany Medical Center, New York
• BSW The Heart Hospital – Plano, Texas
• Keck Hospital of USC, Los Angeles, California
• University of California San Francisco Medical Center

These four hospitals are verified as Comprehensive Inpatient centers. The Vascular-VP offers two levels of participation for inpatient hospitals relative to the scope of care provided: Comprehensive Inpatient and Verified Inpatient.

“The most important benefit patients get from this program is that they know the hospital in which they are receiving care is committed to quality and has demonstrated they meet clinical care standards for vascular surgery. It’s not just their own hospital evaluating itself, it’s outside institutions and surgeons who have expertise in evaluating centers,” said R. Clement Darling III, MD, FACS, DFSVS, chief of vascular surgery at Albany Medical Center, Albany, New York, and Chair of the inpatient subcommittee of the Vascular Standards Committee that helped develop Vascular-VP.

To become verified, these hospitals have met the standards outlined in the Optimal Resources for Vascular Surgery and Interventional Care (2023 Inpatient Standards), which addresses elements of vascular surgical care and quality.