The US healthcare accreditation organisation Joint Commission has announced a partnership with the Society of Thoracic Surgeons (STS) and the American College of Cardiology (ACC), to leverage clinical performance data for a new cardiac care certification driven by measures of patient outcomes.
The upcoming cardiac certification will be informed by three patient registries that already are used extensively by hospitals and other US healthcare organisations—the STS Adult Cardiac Surgery Database (ACSD), the ACC CathPCI Registry, and the joint STS/ACC TVT registry if they perform transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI) procedures.
“At a time of both rapid advancement in medicine and increasing complexity in healthcare, we must ensure that patients not only have access to quality care, but also that they can have confidence in the care they are getting,” says Jonathan B Perlin, president and chief executive of Joint Commission. “At the same time, it is critical to ease the burden on busy clinicians and healthcare organisations, so they can focus on delivering great care. By harnessing registries from trusted specialty societies like STS and ACC, we can do both. This new certification along with Joint Commission’s other next generation-certification programs shift the focus from primarily observation of structure and process toward outcome measures.”
Integrating these registries into the certification process is an essential element of certification and allows organizations to use the same high-quality outcomes data they already submit to STS and ACC as participants in the ACSD, CathPCI Registry, and STS/ACC TVT Registry, Joint Commission said in a press release. In doing so, hospitals and other healthcare organizations will be able to link certification directly to real-world clinical performance.
“This partnership reflects a shared commitment to advancing the highest standards of quality and patient safety in cardiac surgery,” said Joseph F Sabik, STS president. “By bringing the nation’s most trusted cardiac surgery outcomes data from the STS National Database into Joint Commission’s certification program, we can give hospitals a more meaningful way to demonstrate excellence, improve care, and reduce unnecessary administrative burden.
“For surgeons, this means their programmes can more easily demonstrate excellence, strengthen their position with hospital leadership, and differentiate themselves in an increasingly outcomes-driven health care environment.”
The ACC CathPCI registry assesses the characteristics, treatments and outcomes of cardiac disease patients who receive diagnostic catheterisation and/or percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) procedures.
“The CathPCI registry has evolved well beyond its initial purpose,” says Richard Kovacs, chief medical officer of the ACC. “It is a cornerstone for advancing the quality of cardiovascular care and generating high-quality evidence that informs clinical decision-making in the cath lab. Integrating CathPCI registry data into Joint Commission’s new cardiac certification allows cardiovascular teams and health systems to more clearly quantify the real-world impact of their patient care and clinical expertise.”
The STS/ACC TVT Registry, created through a collaboration between STS and ACC, monitors patient safety and real-world outcomes related to transcatheter valve replacement and repair procedures.
