Learn About the Registry at our AAOS Annual Meeting Booth
During the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS) Annual Meeting on March 1-5, we will have a booth at the Orange County Convention Center, Academy Hall WC, in Orlando, Florida. Our staff will be greeting attendees and answering questions about the hip and knee replacement Registry. Also, staff members will be providing a demonstration of the new AJRR Level III patient-reported outcome (PRO) dashboard system and explaining its benefits. The dashboard system can collect electronic health records (EHR) directly from hospitals or through an EHR vendor, and sort the data into charts, graphs, and reports that visualize the information. Once a significant amount of data is collected in the Registry, the dashboard system will be able to compare PRO data from individual hospitals to national benchmarks. Stop by our booth if you are thinking about starting a PRO program or are ready to submit PRO data to a Registry!
AJRR User Group Network Conference Call Recap
The AJRR User Group Network (Unet), had a very successful first-ever conference call last month. The purpose of the User Group Network is to bring Registry participants together and allow them to ask each other questions and provide guidance. This could include advice on Registry best practices, data collection help, knowledge about what's worked well in the past, and a number of other situations that hospital or private practice staff might find themselves in. With Unet, participating institutions will be able to learn more about AJRR, and will be able to get more out of their Registry involvement.
Over 78 people from 71 different institutions and 29 different states were registered for the call. Some people came from large health systems, and some were from small rural hospitals. Call attendees also had a variety of roles, such as surgeons, research coordinators, service line directors, and nurses. There are now over 95 members of Unet.
A User Group Network Advisory Board made up of six professionals from different AJRR participating hospitals was formed on the call. These professionals include: Mike Anderson from University of Utah in Salt Lake City, UT, Judy Casper from Midwest Orthopedic Specialty Hospital in Franklin, WI, Cecily Froemke from Providence Health & Services in Renton, WA, Chris Kane from Catholic Health in Buffalo, NY, Dr. Mark Snyder from TriHealth in Cincinnati, OH, and Cheryl Talamo from Doylestown Hospital in Doylestown, PA. Other topics discussed during the call were the frequency of Unet calls, webinars, best channels of communication, and miscellaneous topics of interest. The last major conversation topic was about the proposed agenda for the Unet meeting at the AAOS Annual Meeting.
Unet at AAOS
We will be hosting an in-person User Group Network meeting on March 2 from 12 - 2 pm EST in the Silver Spring Room at the Hyatt Regency Orlando during the AAOS Annual Meeting. A dial-in option is also offered. Because of the popularity of this session, you will be required to register in advance.
Are you or a colleague interested in joining the User Group Network? Aside from attending the open meeting, you can register for the group on our website. There will be regularly scheduled User Group calls throughout 2016 where important developments will be discussed. For example, discussion topics may include the implications of the Comprehensive Care for Joint Replacement (CJR) model ruling or how to implement a PRO program at your institution. The User Group is still in its beginning stages, so you could be a huge part of making it a successful resource for the entire field of joint replacement!
If you would like to attend the March 2 Unet meeting either in-person or by dialing in, register here. To view the March 2 Unet meeting agenda, click here. To sign up to receive future Unet communications, click here.
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Board of Directors to Convene Meeting
The spring meeting of the AJRR Board of Directors will be held in Orlando, Florida at the time of the AAOS Annual Meeting. Major issues will be discussed including the expansion of the Registry, hospital recruitment, and the prioritization of Level II data (patient risk factors/comorbidities). The Board is always open to hearing from institutions participating in the Registry. AJRR Chair Dr. Daniel J. Berry makes it easy to ask him questions or direct concerns; contact him at [email protected].
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We're Releasing New PROMs Materials
We've published a guide on how to implement our Level III patient-reported outcome (PRO) platform in an institution. It features several tables that summarize the patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) that the AJRR collects, and which specific measures are recommended. We realize that some institutions may have long-standing PRO programs, so a variety of measures are collected.
Helpful hints for starting a PRO program at an institution are given in the guide, as well as a list of questions that hospital staff might ask themselves before beginning the program. Two workflow diagrams are included in the guide, showing how data is submitted into the Registry in both electronic and paper formats. A section devoted to the lessons learned from our participants is featured at the end of the document. The advice is based on previously-held focus groups and discussions with hospitals.
In addition to the Patient-Reported Outcome Measures Guide, we've updated our Demand Reporting & Electronic Dashboard System User Guide to include Level III instructions. The PROMs dashboards and patient portal are new features of the Registry, so detailed steps are laid out for your convenience. Participating institutions will now be able to better manage their PRO programs and can build them around the information provided in the guides.
To download an electronic copy of AJRR's Patient-Reported Outcome Measures Guide, click here. A downloadable copy of the AJRR Demand Reporting & Electronic Dashboard System User Guide: Level I & Level III will be available after the AAOS Annual Meeting.
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Upcoming Audit of 2015 Registry Data
To ensure that AJRR's data and reporting are as accurate as possible, every year we undergo a third-party audit of a sample of our participating hospitals. West Virginia Medical Institute (WVMI) is a non-profit organization that works with numerous medical specialty organizations and the federal government on a variety of quality initiatives. They have audited our data the past two years, finding our data to be over 90% accurate. In March, WVMI will start the audit of our 2015 data. 18 of our submitting hospitals have been randomly selected to participate in the audit. Hospitals selected for the audit will receive communication from September Cahue, Senior Registry Analyst, by February 24.
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We Can Help Meet Meaningful Use Objectives
One of the easiest and most cost-efficient ways that we can help satisfy the public health reporting objective is to submit data to a specialized registry. Our hip and knee replacement Registry is perfect for orthopaedic surgeons to meet 2016 Meaningful Use requirements. Check out the Meaningful Use section on our website to get more information.
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Curious About the CJR Model? Check Out Our List of Things to Know
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services' (CMS) Comprehensive Care for Joint Replacement (CJR) model final ruling was released in November 2015, and the orthopaedic community is addressing the issues and figuring out how the ruling impacts them - especially when it comes to Clinical Data Registry participation. Utilizing the data from your participation with AJRR can be considered a quality initiative that can earn hospitals credit towards this CMS program.
We've put together a Top 12 list of things to know about CJR and Clinical Data Registries. Questions like when the program begins, who is affected, and more are answered in the list. We've also created a list of the data elements to be submitted for CJR.
A CMS supplied Frequently Asked Questions page can be found here.
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By the Numbers
To date, AJRR has 353,278 procedures reported to the Registry. This is monumental growth and exceeds previous estimates. Congratulations to the participating hospitals for their contributions of their invaluable resources, making the AJRR the number one national orthopaedic Registry!
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Introductory Webinars
AJRR staff continues to host introductory webinars for those who are interested in joining the Registry and would like a basic overview of what we offer. If your institution resides in one of the CJR metropolitan statistical areas, this webinar should be of special interest to you! Introductory webinars will be held at the following times this year:
To register for one of these sessions, click here.
Previous Webinars
Patient-Reported Outcomes Informational Webinar
Our Analytics team hosted an informational webinar about the AJRR Level III/patient-reported outcomes (PRO) platform on both December 9, 2015 and January 6, 2016. Recommended PRO measures were discussed, as well as the reasons for why starting a PRO data collection program is beneficial. Our Director of IT demonstrated how to use the new dashboard system, and along with the Analytics team, fielded questions on how to get started reporting. To listen to a recording of the webinar, click here. To view the slides, click here.
Recordings and slides from all other previously held webinars can be found on our website.
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Data Corner
Our 2014 Annual Report has a wealth of information on procedural and revision data. Table 1 (pictured above) contains some interesting findings. In 2014, the average number of arthroplasties reported to the Registry for an individual surgeon was 52.3 per year. Table 1 demonstrates an average of 23.2 per year for primary hip arthroplasty and 39.9 per year for primary knee arthroplasty. Numbers from 2014 also reveal that revisions per surgeon were much lower at 6.1 per year for hip revision and 5.9 per year for knee revision. Actual totals may be higher for some surgeons who operate at both an AJRR participating and non-participating hospital during the same year.
Slides with all of the tables and figures from the 2014 Annual Report can be found on our
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