Previous Page St. John Improves Surgical Safety Through SCOAP Initiative Posted 1/15/2009 Surgeons at St. John Medical Center are among the first in Washington to implement an important surgical checklist initiative. SCOAP (Surgical Care and Outcomes Assessment Program) is a voluntary physician-led program designed to vastly reduce surgical errors. “We volunteered to participate in using the SCOAP checklist because it is a proven way to improve the safety of surgery,” says Dr. Steven Cabrales, Chief Medical Officer at St. John Medical Center. “The World Health Organization (WHO) has found that use of a surgical checklist doubles a patient’s chances of receiving proven standards of surgical care, and substantially reduces surgical complications and deaths. It only takes two extra minutes prior to surgery to go through the checklist. It’s time well spent.” St. John Medical Center already scores well in surgical safety compared to its peers, and SCOAP will help enhance the high standards. “We are top ranked in our surgical performance measures,” says Dr. Eleen Kirman, LCR’s Medical Director of Surgical Services. “SCOAP will allow us to benchmark our performance so our patients can compare our outcomes with other hospitals. We volunteered to participate in the SCOAP program because we want our patients to have full transparency on our surgical outcomes.” The SCOAP checklist directs surgical teams to participate in a pre-surgical briefing, outlines process controls prior to skin incision, and calls for a post-surgical debriefing. As of today, St. John is one of only 14 Washington state hospitals piloting the SCOAP and World Health Organization checklist, and is the only hospital in southwest Washington. More information about this important initiative can be found at www.scoap.org. For more information, email PeaceHealth's Public Affairs office.