Assessing performance of Geriatric Surgery Verification Program preoperative communication standards in spine surgery

To assess performance of the American College of Surgeons Geriatric Surgery Verification (GSV) Program preoperative communication standards in older patients undergoing high risk spine surgery.

We performed an external validation of a natural language processing (NLP) method for identifying documentation meeting GSV communication standards. We then applied this method to a retrospective cohort of patients aged 65 and older who underwent spinal fusion procedures between January 2018-December 2020 in a large healthcare system in Massachusetts. Our primary outcome of interest was fulfillment of GSV communication domains: overall health goals, treatment goals, and patient-centered outcomes. Factors associated with the fulfillment of at least one domain were assessed using Poisson regression to adjust for confounding.

External validation of the NLP method had a sensitivity of 88.6% and specificity of 99.0%. Our study population included 1294 patients, of whom only 0.8% (n = 10) patients contained documentation of all three GSV domains, and 33.7% (n = 436) had documentation fulfilling at least one GSV domain. The GSV domain with lowest frequency of documentation was overall health goals, with only 35 (2.7%) of patients meeting this requirement. Adjusted analysis suggested that patients with a Charlson comorbidity score of one or more had higher fulfillment of GSV criteria (CCI 1-3: prevalence rate ratio (PRR) 1.8, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.5-2.1; CCI >3: PRR 1.5, 95% CI 1.2-1.9).

A paucity of geriatric patients undergoing spine surgery had preoperative documentation consistent with GSV standards. Given that spine surgery is one of the highest risk surgeries in older adults and GSV standards are relevant to all surgical specialties, wider promulgation of these standards is warranted.