By Bill Prentice
The ASC Quality Collaboration (ASCQC) brings together leaders from across the ambulatory surgery center (ASC) community – such as associations like the Ambulatory Surgery Center Association (ASCA) and the Association of periOperative Registered Nurses (AORN), accrediting organizations, management companies and state associations – to advance patient safety and quality of care in surgery centers. Founded in 2006 to develop and support standardized quality measures, the mission of this independent, nonprofit organization is to serve as a resource for ASC quality and safety. It is governed by a board of directors and has an executive committee, a technical expert committee and several task forces that help drive its mission.
ASCQC maintains ASC benchmarking data and measure specifications on its website and provides quality improvement tools and resources pertinent to ASCQC measures. It also developed and maintains six ASC quality reporting (ASCQR) measures of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).
CMS currently requires surgery centers to report on 14 different quality measures to the government each year or be penalized 2 percent of the reimbursements that they receive for providing care to Medicare beneficiaries. Leaving aside the penalties, ASCA supports these reporting requirements because they help policymakers, patients and payers see the high quality of care that surgery centers provide. In addition, the measures also help individual surgery centers compare their results to other centers and learn where there is room to improve.
ASCQC collects data from its members quarterly and provides benchmarking reports that represent more than 2.5 million encounters per quarter. On its website, the organization publishes those aggregate national results for nine measures. And because ASCQC reports are published quarterly, centers do not have to wait nearly two years like they do with CMS data.
Last year, ASCQC introduced a free safety and quality assessment tool that all surgery centers can use. It is a concise, 20-minute self-assessment tool that covers safety and quality practices such as governance, quality improvement, infection prevention and patient experience. ASCs receive a dashboard report showing how they compare nationally along with a certificate and a website badge to highlight their commitment to safety and quality. ASCs can share the report with interested payers, employers or other stakeholders. It is a credible ASC-specific quality comparison that can be used to build trust with patients, providers and payers while reinforcing the ASC value story for all of us.
The tool has a validation process to ensure that it has valid and reliable data.
Last year, which was the first year of the assessment, nearly 400 ASCs participated. The results were overwhelmingly positive and revealed strong safety and quality practices across the centers with a few minor improvement opportunities.
This year, the assessment will open on May 1 and surgery centers will have until mid-June to enter their data. Once the submission window closes, ASCQC will validate the data in the next few weeks and prepare the dashboards with the national comparison. Participating surgery centers will get their results via email. All submissions are strictly confidential and results are never published.
This is a great opportunity for surgery centers to invest a few minutes and get powerful information back. Knowledge is power. The report ASCs get back shows how they are doing compared to others, as well as if there is an area where they are falling short and have an opportunity to improve. I strongly encourage every surgery center to use this tool every year. The aggregate can create great data that ASCA can use to advocate on behalf of surgery centers.
Led by Executive Director Nina Goins and Assistant Executive Director Becky Ziegler-Otis, the goal of ASCQC is to make it easy for surgery centers to report on quality measures that have been tested in surgery centers and make sense to the surgery center community. Goins and Ziegler-Otis regularly present and discuss quality and safety topics at conferences. Listen to an ASCA podcast with Goins: https://www.ascassociation.org/asca/news-and-publications/podcast/episode-patient-safety-and-quality-of-care-in-ascs. Access ASCQC’s annual report: https://ascquality.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/ASCQC-2025-Annual-Report.pdf.
