The mission of the American College of Surgeons Health Policy Research Institute is to improve the understanding of surgical patient care from a policy perspective in order to educate the public, federal and state governments, health care consumers, and the policy community to enable advocacy for superior, efficient, and compassionate surgical patient care. The goal of the Institute is to create a data driven, knowledge based program for examining issues related to surgical services, the surgical workforce, and public policies affecting surgery.
The creation of this Institute is in response to the need for high quality and relevant data on the health care system, the economy and society as they affect surgical patients and practitioners. Specifically, the Institute strives to address the following major issues:
- Understanding and predicting surgical manpower issues affecting the care of the surgical patient
- Understanding how emerging technology affects care of the surgical patient.
- Developing meaningful surgical quality guidelines based on sound research.
- Understanding the impact of healthcare economics and medicolegal environments upon surgical patients.
- Providing an educational environment for health policy and socioeconomic scholarship.
- Providing an effective legislative communication system to effect improvements in quality and delivery of surgical care.