Laurence H. Belkoff, D.O., FACOS
President

Operation Patient Access

The ACOS is a partner organization in Operation Patient Access—a communications effort led by the American College of Surgeons to bring into focus the urgent issues facing access to quality surgical care in the United States. As federal policymakers examine how to reform the country’s healthcare system in the midst of the worst economic crisis in decades, there is a growing concern that the current focus on cost controls will influence decisions and further compromise access to quality surgical care.

Operation Patient Access will help policymakers understand that:

• Patient access to quality surgical care is at risk due to well intentioned policies that had unintended consequences.
• The surgical workforce shortage is getting worse and cannot be fixed overnight due to the many years of post-medical school training required for surgeons. This shortage already is affecting patient access to care by endangering rural hospitals and overwhelming city trauma centers and emergency rooms.
• Surgical services are not interchangeable; they must be performed by qualified surgeons.

Operation Patient Access is committed to assisting policymakers in crafting workable solutions to address access problems and to preserve and improve the quality of surgical care.

For more information about this effort, visit Operation Patient Access.

For flyers that you can print in color at a quick copy and give to your patients and colleagues, go to:

FAQ and OPA one pager - Patient

We also would like your feed back on how the College can make this web site more useful. Contact me or Sonjya Johnson, the ACOS staff person responsible for our web site, with your suggestions for additions, corrections, or technical problems.