The Anesthesia Quality Institute (AQI) was created by action of the ASA House of Delegates in October, 2008.

The vision of the AQI is “to become the primary source of information for quality improvement in the clinical practice of anesthesiology.”

The mission of the AQI is “Develop and maintain an ongoing registry of case data that helps anesthesiologists assess and improve patient care. Organize the registry so that anesthesiology practice groups desire to submit their case information, and so that individual anesthesiologists, practice groups, researchers, and professional societies find the data useful for improving the quality of care.”

The eventual goal of the AQI is to provide a resource for anesthesiologists to obtain patient safety and quality management data and to meet regulatory requirements designed to improve patient care. AQI data will be useful for activities ranging from Faculty education to outcomes measurement to emerging federal efforts to ensure performance improvement. It is hoped that the AQI will eventually include as contributors the majority of anesthesia practices and practicing anesthesiologists in the United States.

Data contributed to the AQI will be held in the strictest confidence, and will be analyzed and reported in the aggregate only. The information we provide in aggregate will improve patient safety and patient care for 40 million Americans who receive anesthetics every year. For more specific uses, such as allowing individual contributors to assess and improve patient care, we will request permission of the provider or practice first, and will limit disclosure to only those with a “need to know.”

The following pages describe the structure of the National Anesthesia Clinical Outcomes Registry (NACOR), data flow into and out of the AQI, and key personnel responsible.