SENDING QUALITY DATA TO AQI

AQI participants range from practice groups that have no quality capture program in place to large academic centers with very sophisticated data capture and electronic systems. AQI would like to see every anesthesia practice contributing outcomes data to NACOR. Please review the three categories below to determine which situation applies to your practice. Some suggestions on how to move forward with outcomes capture and reporting are provided.

Skip to the situation that matches your practice:

• No Quality Capture Program in Place
• Capturing Quality Data on Paper
• Capturing Quality Data Through an AIMS or EMR

1. No Quality Capture Program in Place

   Your practice may submit data to AQI even if you are not capturing quality indicators. The demographic data you provide through our website survey paired with the billing/case data extracted from your billing software allows you to access your practice report that includes data about your practice, facilities, and providers. Customized reporting features allow filtering by facility type, patient variables, and surgical case. Data tables and illustrative charts are displayed. In addition to your own data, aggregate registry data is presented where applicable.

   We encourage you to start a quality capture program in your practice to deepen the data contained in your practice report and obtain more granular benchmarking data for quality improvement. AQI provides tools on our website to help you move toward a QI program. Please visit Starting a Quality Management Program for helpful hints on starting a program including an anesthesia department checklist and a toolkit developed by the ASA Committee on Quality Management and Departmental Administration.

   AQI has developed (source: ASA Committee on Performance Measurements & Outcomes) a template of anesthesia quality indicators and their definitions under Quality Measurement Tools. The template may be modified to suit your local conditions and resources.

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2. Capturing Quality Data on Paper

   Many anesthesia practices capture quality data indicators on a paper form in the PACU. It is a continuing challenge to put this valuable data into a format that the practice can use to identify areas for improvement. Collecting the data puts you one step ahead of those who have no system in place. The next step is to convert the data into an electronic format for the most versatile reporting capabilities and analysis.

   The following options are areas you may want to explore:

   1. Convert your paper forms into one monthly file. Some practices have an administrator or nurse collect the forms and enter them into an Excel worksheet or an Access database. AQI will accept these formats and work with you to connect them to the appropriate case data in the registry.
   2. Scan your paper form. There are many vendors who offer scanning capabilities such as scan pens, OCR recognition software, etc. AQI will work with you and/or your software vendor to facilitate uploading your quality capture data to the registry.
   3. Some billing vendors have the capability of adding a quality capture module (or some additional dataset fields) to the billing fields they are currently capturing for you. This method allows one data upload to the registry that will include your case data along with the quality data.
   4. Purchase a separate quality capture product that integrates with other software that you are currently using.

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3. Capturing Quality Data Through an AIMS or EMR

   If you are collecting outcomes through an AIMS or EMR system, you will need to facilitate a data transfer to AQI.  You may create a report from your AIMS or EMR system which contains the outcomes information or contact your vendor and request a report of outcomes.  AQI is available to consult with you or your vendor about the format and content of the data file.     

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