The National Patient Safety Consortium, made up of over 50 organizations from across Canada and convened by the Canadian Patient Safety Institute, identified surgical care safety as one of the four primary areas of focus for an Integrated Patient Safety Action Plan. In March 2014, a National Surgical Care Safety Summit was convened and stakeholders identified a need to accelerate surgical care safety improvement in Canada. One of the key themes was measurement and analysis of timely, relevant and robust data specific to surgical care safety including outcomes and never events. The goal was a common set of national surgical safety indicators.

As a first step toward this goal, the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) assembled a working group to review existing surgical care safety indicators and identify a set of surgical care safety indicators that might have applicability broadly in Canada. A modified Delphi panel process was followed. This report is the result of the important work lead by CIHI. The next step will bring together a working group to consider how to move forward on the findings of the report.

Partner organizations involved in this work included:

• Alberta Health Services
• British Columbia Ministry of Health
• British Columbia Patient Safety & Quality Council
• Canadian Institute for Health Information
• Canadian Patient Safety Institute
• Eastern Health (NL)
• Health Quality Ontario
• Jewish General Hospital (QC)
• McGill University (QC)
• Nova Scotia Health Authority
• Operating Room Nurses Association of Canada
• Queen Elizabeth Hospital (PEI)
• Saskatchewan Health Quality Council
• Saskatchewan Ministry of Health
• University of Toronto