Center of excellence

A center of excellence (CoE) is an organizational structure or team dedicated to a particular area of expertise, often aiming to provide leadership, best practices, research, support, and training within that field. CoEs are commonly used in various sectors such as healthcare, technology, and education to drive innovation and improve performance.

In healthcare, a CoE might focus on a specific type of care or treatment, like a center of excellence in neurosurgery or cancer treatment. These centers are typically recognized for their advanced clinical capabilities, research contributions, and high standards of patient care.

Padula et al. in an article, examine how avoidable complications, post-acute healthcare use, revision surgery, and readmissions among spine surgery patients contribute to $67 million of wasteful spending on value defects. Furthermore, they estimated that almost $27 million of these costs could be recuperated simply by redirecting patients to facilities referred to as centers of excellence. In total, quality improvement efforts are costly to implement but may only cost about $36 million to fully correct the $67 million in finances misappropriated to value defects. The objective of this article is to present an approach to eliminate defects in spine surgery, including a center of excellence framework for eliminating defects specific to this group of procedures ¹⁾