AAOS announces incorporation of American Joint Replacement Registry

The American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS) announced its incorporation of the American Joint Replacement Registry (AJRR) — a nonprofit organization dedicated to collecting and reporting on hip and knee joint replacement procedures — in an effort to increase patient safety.

According to the AAOS, the goal of a national joint registry is to monitor device performance. In doing this, AAOS officials hope to recognize underperforming processes or devices and, furthermore, support continued clinical learning.

According to an AAOS press release, the AJRR proposal calls for an independent, not-for-profit organization funded by the proposing stakeholders — including orthopedic surgeons, government agencies, patient groups, hospitals and device manufacturers — at an estimated initiation cost of $20 to $25 million.

“In 2009, AAOS has made great strides in bringing the American Joint Replacement Registry to reality,” John Callaghan, MD, first vice president of the AAOS, said in the press release. “We have now incorporated, and we currently are in the process of forming project work groups to tackle data, governance and oversight issues.”

The joint registry features a number of facets aimed at improving patient safety and medical care. They include:

privacy safeguards for patients;
legal protections for device makers and physicians;
a plan to begin capturing data as early as 2010; and
infrastructure to capture at least 90% of all procedures.

Callaghan said a national joint registry will help doctors more quickly identify poorly performing products and match patient procedures and devices to optimize outcomes. The advantages of such a practice are many, and they include cheaper services for patients and the potential to reduce the number of revision or secondary surgeries.

AAOS officials, basing their outcomes on procedure projections through 2030, said the potential savings could exceed $13 billion over 20 years, according to the press release.

“This has been a work in progress … over the past 8 or 9 years,” William J. Maloney, MD, told Orthopedics Today. “There is consensus that this is something that will be a benefit to patients, doctors, surgeons and hospitals.”

According to Maloney, the registry will allow for more patient interaction with the industry and help better inform physicians as to which products or techniques are showing the greatest results, as well as those that are underperforming.

“By keeping track of what goes in and what comes out, we can give a patients a better idea of what their relative risks of revision surgery are,” he said. “We can provide feedback to the surgeons about how they are doing comparing to peers with similar practices, and we can provide feedback to hospitals about how they are doing compared to hospitals of similar size and volume.

“We feel that kind of feedback is important when people try to objectively size up how they are performing,” he added.

For more information:
William J. Maloney, MD, Elsback-Richards Professor and chair of the department of orthopedic surgery at Stanford University School of Medicine, can be reached at 300 Pasteur Drive, Edwards R109, Stanford, CA 94305; 650-723-1690; e-mail: wmaloney@stanford.edu.
www6.aaos.org/news/pemr/JointRegistry/JointRegistry.cfm