American Gastroenterological Association - Advancing the Science and Practice of Gastroenterology

Registries Improve Quality, Enhance Business

Patient outcome registries provide health-care professionals with novel ways to measure and improve the quality of care they deliver. Registries provide a vehicle for improving outcomes using methods, clinical content and measurement standards that are useful and appropriate for health-care providers. In addition to providing feedback on patient outcomes, well-designed registries enable proactive monitoring of patient populations, allowing clinicians to actively survey and intervene as necessary to prevent adverse health events, predict patients at risk for deteriorating health and ensure appropriate follow-up. Additionally, benchmarking outcomes provides clinicians with useful comparisons to set targets for improvement and demonstrate excellence.

The realities of our health system require that clinicians also learn to thrive in an environment in which payors and patients are increasingly demanding value-based care, and reimbursement is reliant on the same. Already, health payors have implemented quality measurement programs that provide incentives for reporting quality metrics and showing improvement. In the future, payors will introduce provisions that reduce reimbursement for those who do not report their results or do not demonstrate quality sufficient to meet standards. Patient registries serve as a valuable tool to demonstrate and report quality, and payors have shown a strong interest in using them to drive these programs.

The AGA Digestive Health Outcomes Registry™ was designed to enable meaningful outcomes improvement in GI and provide clinicians an easy means to participate in payor incentive and recognition programs. Payors are already measuring quality using claims data that does not tell an accurate story, and using measures that have not been validated by professionals who represent the specialty. The AGA Registry was designed by gastroenterologists, using measures that are based on accepted clinical guidelines. The registry is working through partnerships to provide clinicians with consistent, fair measurement across payors.

Patient registries will continue to serve an important role in assisting health-care professionals to assess and improve outcomes, demonstrate gains to payors, and help practices succeed in a value-driven health-care environment. Utilizing partnerships with payors and guidelines-driven measurement, the registry will continue to support GI professionals and enable them to achieve success in this rapidly evolving environment.