Information from participating members is provided anonymously to the central exchange in an ongoing manner , usually within 48-72 hours of an individual patient discharge from an ambulatory surgery center. Patient identifiers and surgery center identifiers are purged prior to submission over the Internet to protect the privacy of the submitting organization. The data from the exchange members is processed by special statistical algorithms, the performance indicators are calculated for individual members and for all members creating an industry standard for benchmarking. The reports are placed on password-protected web pages for each center individually every month. The reports present the benchmarks for a current month, which allows tracking individual patients when necessary, and the cumulative benchmarks, which show the position of the center among the peers.
Participation is crucial to the success of the exchange.
Staying informed and learning from the experiences of others is a decisive step in maintaining an effective quality assurance program and assisting with the accreditation process .