What is an SPEQ?

SPEQ stands for Surgical Practice Evaluation and Quality. SPEQs are measurable quality metrics within Theator that track the adoption of evidence-based surgical best practices across your cases and department.

How SPEQs Work

Each SPEQ represents a specific surgical best practice that has been identified through clinical evidence as contributing to better patient outcomes. Theator's AI analyzes your surgical recordings and automatically evaluates whether each applicable SPEQ was performed during a procedure.

For example, a SPEQ might track whether a critical safety step was performed, whether a specific anatomical landmark was identified, or whether a recommended technique was used during a particular phase of surgery.

Where You Will See SPEQs

SPEQs appear throughout the Theator platform:

• Case Page -- Open a case, then open Performance and select Surgical practices to see the practices that were performed in that case. This option appears only when the case has been evaluated for at least one practice.
• Analytics -- In the analytics section, SPEQs are aggregated across multiple cases to show trends and patterns in your surgical practice over time.
• Quality Initiatives -- SPEQs are the building blocks of Quality Initiatives, where departments track collective progress toward specific quality improvement goals.

Why SPEQs Matter

SPEQs provide an objective, data-driven way to evaluate surgical quality. Rather than relying solely on subjective assessment, SPEQs give surgeons and departments concrete metrics to:

• Identify strengths in their surgical technique and workflow.
• Spot areas for improvement where best practices may not be consistently followed.
• Track progress over time as new techniques or protocols are adopted.
• Support quality improvement programs with measurable outcomes.

Understanding SPEQ Results

Each SPEQ is scored once for every case it is evaluated on: the practice was either performed or not performed. There is no partial score within a case.

On the case page, the Surgical practices panel (titled Surgical practices performed in this case) lists the practices that were performed, by name. Hover over a practice name to see its description, when one is available.

• Practices that were not performed are not listed by default. Admins and venue admins can turn on Show not achieved to see them in a separate Not achieved list. If none of the evaluated practices were performed, the panel is empty for other users.
• Practices that don't apply to the case, or that the case has not been evaluated for, are not shown at all.
• If you believe a result is wrong, an admin or venue admin can select Dismiss next to the practice and choose a reason (Incomplete recording, Inaccurate evaluation, or Other) to exclude the case from that practice's statistics.

To see how these per-case results add up to an adoption rate, see How Quality Scores Are Calculated.

What's Next?

• Manage Quality Initiatives — Track quality improvement goals using SPEQs
• How Quality Scores Are Calculated — How per-case results roll up into an Adoption Rate
• Exploring Best Practices and the Catalog — Browse the best practices library
• Case page Overview — See how SPEQs appear on the case page