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First phase of U.S. joint replacement registry data collection set to begin
Fifteen hospitals and affiliated orthopedists that volunteered to participate in the national registry will soon submit data for the pilot initiative.
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A pilot program to collect hip and knee replacement data from 15 U.S. hospitals for the American Joint Replacement Registry and test other logistical and practical aspects of the data collection process was set to begin in late October or early November, according to the chair of the registry’s board of directors.
“We anticipate receiving data soon,” David G. Lewallen, MD, of the Mayo Clinic who chairs the American Joint Replacement Registry (AJRR) board, told Orthopedics Today.
“We’re making good forward progress,” he said.
According to Lewallen, those institutions participating in the pilot trial represent the variety of hospital settings across the country with which the registry will eventually interface in terms of size and type of practice, from the academic to the community setting.
“The main purpose of the trial is for us to try to understand, as well as we can, the work processes, the challenges and those things that work best for hospitals for data submission,” he said.
Growing interest
Lewallen said 75 hospitals initially agreed to participate in this critical test run, but many more were added to that list after the first 15 participating hospitals and their affiliated orthopedists were selected for the first phase of implementing the web-based registry.
“This is a trial of the system we’ve been developing and we continue to try to optimize and minimize the burden of data submission.”
The names of the first 15 hospitals should be revealed once their data are entered into the registry. Soon thereafter, most likely in early 2011, several more hospitals will be added and start populating the registry with their data, according to a spokesperson from the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, a major AJRR partner.
Toward a more secure registry
“Secondary goals are to get our processes in place for accepting data, to make sure that we de-identify the data in a very secure fashion,” Lewallen said.
For security purposes, de-identified patient data will be kept in one location on a HIPPA-compliant server with the patient data that are linked to randomly assigned patient numbers or social security numbers stored on a separate server at another location. He said the chances are slim that an unauthorized person would be able to access, decipher and correctly correlate the two stores of information.
“We need to maintain patient confidentiality, but at the same time this allows us to find out who the patients are if there’s a failure subsequently or a recall or something of that sort so that, in the patients’ best interest, can help facilitate notifications,” Lewallen said. “That’s another secondary goal of the trial, to try and work that all out.”
AJRR officials expect to learn from this pilot process, which only includes registering details about knee and hip replacements for now, more about how to bring institutions online smoothly. They also hope to become more familiar with the variability in approvals and agreements that might be encountered at various institutions as the number of AJRR participants increases. – by Susan M. Rapp
Reference:
- Laura Khoshaba, coordinator of the American Joint Replacement Registry, can be reached at khoshaba@ajrr.net.
- David G. Lewallen, MD, can be reached at 200 1st St., SW, Rochester, MN 55905; 507-284-4896; e-mail: lewallen.david@mayo.edu.
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