American Joint Replacement Registry becomes first registry to accept patient data through Epic’s cloud-based Community Registries

ROSEMONT, Ill. (Oct. 1, 2026)—The American Joint Replacement Registry (AJRR), the cornerstone of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS) Registry Program, is now the first registry to accept patient data through the Epic Community Registry framework. Southern Illinois Healthcare is the first health system to use the integration to submit data directly from its Epic electronic health record to AJRR.

Epic’s Community Registries automatically gathers the data AJRR needs from a hospital’s medical records and submits it to the registry, without hospital staff manually preparing submissions. Depending on what a hospital records, the extracted data can include details about the surgery, how the patient recovered, and how patients themselves say they are doing. Automating this process can reduce the time and manual effort required to prepare registry submissions while supporting more robust data collection. With less administrative work and more complete, timely data, participating sites can benchmark outcomes more efficiently and more effectively use registry insights to support quality improvement efforts and patient care.

“This is a real win for AJRR and participating sites,” said James I. Huddleston III, MD, FAAOS, chair of the AJRR Steering Committee. “When quality data can flow directly from the electronic health record, health systems and other organizations will spend more time using the information to understand outcomes, improve care and support patients.”

The milestone marks the transition from availability to real-world use. When AAOS announced the Epic Community Registries integration in 2025, the goal was to reduce the burden of registry participation, improve data completeness and provide more timely insights to support patient care. With the first health system now submitting data, those benefits are beginning to be realized in practice.

“This integration represents an important evolution in how registry data can be collected and shared, creating an end-to-end connection so submissions can flow automatically to the registry and actionable feedback flows directly back into the EHR," said Mayank Abhishek, who leads Community Registries research and development at Epic. “Congratulations to AAOS and Southern Illinois Healthcare for being the first to bring it live.”

To get involved with the AJRR, email an AAOS Registry engagement associate at RegistryEngagement@aaos.org call 847-292-0530, or visit www.aaos.org/registries.

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AAOS Registry Program
The AAOS Registry Program’s mission is to improve orthopaedic care through the collection, analysis, and reporting of actionable data. The American Joint Replacement Registry (AJRR), the Academy’s hip and knee replacement registry, is the cornerstone of the AAOS’s Registry Program, and the world’s largest national registry of hip and knee joint replacement data by annual procedural count, with more than 5 million procedures contained within its database. Additional registries include the Musculoskeletal Tumor Registry (MsTR), the Shoulder & Elbow Registry (SER), and the American Spine Registry (ASR), a collaborative effort between the American Association of Neurological Surgeons (AANS) and the AAOS.

About AAOS
With more than 40,000 members, the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons is the world's largest medical association of musculoskeletal specialists. 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. 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.

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