Level III data submission now available for hospitals

The American Joint Replacement Registry (AJRR) launched its Level III patient-reported outcome (PRO) platform at the 2015 American Association of Hip and Knee Surgeons annual meeting last month. AJRR now provides participating hospitals with the ability to submit Level III PRO data.

A PRO is defined as any information on the outcomes of health care obtained directly from patients without modification by clinicians or other healthcare professionals. PROs may be used to assess many different aspects of a patient's health, and to measure surgical or other treatment outcomes over time. Having this data from a National Registry will enable institutions to make informed decisions based on clinical facts and figures.

"PROs are becoming more and more important to health care, as the federal government continues to emphasize their use with programs and quality initiatives," said Daniel J. Berry, MD, chair of the AJRR Board of Directors. "We want to ensure that our platform is relevant to practicing physicians, and that they are getting the most out of what we have to offer."

AJRR developed the PRO platform within its Demand Reporting & Electronic Dashboard system. Clinical staff are now able to access patient data while having the ability to manage PRO surveys electronically via a secure patient portal. The AJRR Dashboard system can also pull site-specific patient reports and summary results for each PRO measure supported on the AJRR system. There is currently no additional cost for Level III data submission.

The AJRR collaborated with several orthopaedic organizations to identify the specific measures that should be recommended and that may be used as national benchmarks. Institutions that have a long-standing PRO data collection process in place will be able to submit and retrieve these alternative measures. However, national benchmarks for them will not be available.

"AJRR launched Level I data element reporting in 2012. We are proud to now release Level III data collection—a highly anticipated action," said Dr. Berry. "Collecting PRO data and submitting it to a Registry provides many benefits for patients, hospitals, practices, and individual orthopaedic surgeons."

For more information about AJRR's patient-reported outcome system, email info@ajrr.net or call 847-292-0530.