Regardless of whether you’re a hospital CEO, CMO, or quality department leader, you are likely familiar with clinical data registries. These databases provide the essential benchmarking information needed to assess and potentially improve quality of care. Programs like the well-established IMPACT Registry and the American Heart Association’s Get With The Guidelines-Stroke program are prime examples of major registry initiatives.

As the healthcare industry continues to shift from fee-for-service to value-based payment, these programs are gaining steam. Earlier this year, we released a report exploring quality program participation across several key reporting areas. Registries were a huge part of it. One key finding in our analysis is that registry participation is growing faster than many previously anticipated. In fact, the 20 largest registries are expected to increase in participation at an average of 7% each year until 2021.

Our bet is that (since you’ve read this far) these facts do not surprise you. Registries are widely regarded as the gold standard with respect to clinical quality data, and participation in them is increasingly being recognized by accrediting bodies as well as federal and state regulators as sufficient for satisfying certain reporting requirements. Our perspective, which is shared by many of our most influential partners, is that registries are the clinical quality measurement tool of the future.

The upside of all of this is that more and more hospitals are seeing registries as a way to meet their quality reporting demands. However, despite this conventional wisdom, their full potential has been largely untapped.

We at Q-Centrix staunchly believe that registry participation can offer so much more than quality improvement. And, trust me, we don’t use “staunchly” lightly here at Q-Centrix. The benefits of registry participation are myriad: cost savings, improved reputation management, better leverage in negotiations with payers… to name a few. This is why our CEO, Milton, recently dedicated a Fierce Healthcare “Industry Voices” piece to this issue. And it’s why we are taking action to empower hospitals to get the most out of their registry participation. Take these examples:

• By introducing AI and automation into the quality industry, we’re helping lower the cost of registry participation to enable facilities to more meaningfully participate in quality improvement programs.
• We are expanding both our capabilities and the number of authorizations for submitting quality data on behalf of hospitals to all major registries to allow hospitals to decrease the number of information systems they must manage to focus on delivering great care.
• We’re dedicating more time than ever before to educating our partners on how to manage these programs with an eye toward unlocking their full power.

So, if you haven’t already, check out Milton’s commentary and then reach out to us if you’d like to chat further about realizing the full value of registries in and beyond quality.