American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS) to launch family of orthopaedic registries

ROSEMONT, Ill. (October 17, 2017) — The American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS) today announced plans to create a national family of clinical data registries for a broad range of orthopaedic conditions and procedures. As part of this effort, the American Joint Replacement Registry (AJRR) is integrating into the AAOS effective immediately. The AJRR, a national hip and knee joint replacement registry with 970 participating U.S. hospitals and 40 ambulatory surgery centers, has captured and analyzed data on more than one million procedures since its creation in 2010.

The launch of the new registry program reflects the Academy’s strategic commitment to quality.

“A central group of orthopaedic registries, providing standardized and consistent data, will allow us to optimally measure performance and value, create and recommend informed reimbursement and treatment standards, develop education programs that address practice and treatment deficiencies, and most importantly, continually and collectively improve patient safety, treatment and outcomes,” said AAOS President William J. Maloney, MD.

“We welcome AJRR to our registry family,” added Dr. Maloney. “Their success and standards will serve as the cornerstone of our new program.”

“The Academy and AJRR share a commitment to helping orthopaedic surgeons provide the highest quality musculoskeletal care to patients,” said AJRR Board of Directors Chair Daniel J. Berry, MD.  “This new integration will allow us to expand and enhance our data collection capacity. We look forward to a continuing, seamless relationship with our partners and participating facilities as we move forward.”

Nathan Glusenkamp is the new AAOS director of orthopaedic registries. Glusenkamp previously served as president of provider solutions at FIGmd, a rapidly growing health information technology vendor delivering data liquidity interfaces to medical societies and boards. Prior to joining FIGmd, he oversaw the American College of Cardiology’s PINNACLE Registry, the largest observational outpatient cardiovascular registry in the world.
 
The AJRR will serve as the hip and knee registries for AAOS, continue to operate business as usual without interruption for existing participating sites, and retain the AJRR name. Additional AAOS registries will launch beginning in mid-to-late 2018, and over the next five years, covering a broad range of conditions and procedures and including data from outpatient and in-patient settings.

About the AAOS
With more than 39,000 members, the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons is the world’s largest medical association of musculoskeletal specialists. The AAOS is the trusted leader in advancing musculoskeletal health. It provides the highest quality, most comprehensive education to help orthopaedic surgeons and allied health professionals at every career level best treat patients in their daily practices. The AAOS is the source for information on bone and joint conditions, treatments and related musculoskeletal health care issues and it leads the health care discussion on advancing quality.

About AJRR
The American Joint Replacement Registry is a multi-stakeholder, independent organization for data collection and quality improvement initiatives for total hip and knee replacements. AJRR’s goal is to optimize patient outcomes through collection of data on all primary and revision total joint replacement procedures in the U.S. Today, the Registry contains more than 1,000,000 procedures from over 8,000 surgeons. For more information about AJRR, visit www.ajrr.net.