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NASS launches spine registry to improve patient care
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The North American Spine Society announced the launch of a diagnosis-based clinical data spine registry that will allow heath care providers to collect and analyze their data on spine care and then compare it with de-identified data in the entire registry.
According to a press release from NASS, the spine registry will optimize the understanding of spine care treatments, outcomes and evaluate the natural history of spinal disorders. The NASS spine registry has been developed over the past 8 years. The organization has tried to reduce potential participation barriers such as cost, privacy concerns, administrative burden and institutional review board participation.
“We wanted to design something that can be used by any spine care practitioner regardless of whether or not the patient required a procedure or not,” Daniel K. Resnick, MD, MS, NASS president and chair of the NASS Registry Committee, told Healio.com/Orthopedics. “It could be used to begin to do some rudimentary comparative effectiveness research by looking at like patients who are treated differently and see what happens to them.”
He added, “The main obstacles were getting something that was affordable to the vast majority of spine care practitioners in a variety of different settings but something that was also powerful enough to provide useful data. ”
The registry will initially focus on patients in the United States who are older than 18 years and are being treated for low back disorders. Participants may include any spine care provider, regardless of specialty, setting or medical/surgical orientation and do not need to be members of NASS. It is reportedly $3,250 for the first participant per practice site and is an additional $300 for each subsequent participant per practice.
Participants of the NASS spine registry will be able to receive confidential feedback of their patient care and will be able to access reports that they can compare to de-identified data. Demographics, diagnosis, treatment, complications and patient-reported outcomes are among the data collected.
At the point of entry, the data are de-identified and no personal data reach either NASS or Ortech Systems Inc., its data vendor. NASS reportedly owns the de-identified data, while each participant owns their own data.
“You don’t necessarily need to be in an industry consortium or large academic center to participate in this,” Resnick said. “[The registry] can provide very valuable information at the local level for quality improvement.” – by Monica Jaramillo
References:
www.spine.org/Portals/0/Documents/PressReleases/2018/NASSLaunchesSpineRegistry.pdf