AAOS Registry Program Blog

Surgeons Can Now Compare Their Own Procedure Data Against National Registry Benchmarks

The mission of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS) Registry Program is to improve orthopaedic care through the collection, analysis, and reporting of actionable data contributed by hospitals, ambulatory surgical centers, and orthopaedic practices across the United States. With the recent introduction of Surgeon Dashboards, the Registry Program has added a new quality improvement resource available to individual AAOS surgeon members.

This new member benefit allows surgeons, whose sites participate in an AAOS Registry, to compare their individual data against national de-identified information and benchmarks. The Surgeon Dashboards, enabled by an enhancement to the AAOS RegistryInsights^® platform, can display procedural, post-operative, and patient-reported outcomes (PRO) data. Surgeon Dashboards are available at no additional cost to participating sites’ surgeons who are AAOS members.

A Guest Blog by Richard Seiden

As a patient who has undergone multiple joint replacement surgeries (hip, knee, shoulder), I have learned a few things from my experience. Sharing what I’ve learned and making a difference in patient outcomes is important to me, but how? I’m a patient, not a doctor.

I have come to realize that I can play a meaningful role in improving care for future surgery patients, including myself, by doing what my doctor asks of me, and that includes participating in the patient-reported outcome (PRO) surveys. The surveys are offered by health care provider sites participating in a clinical data registry. Sites can include hospitals, ambulatory surgery centers (ASCs), or physician offices. I simply answer a few questions prior to and after my surgery. This enables my surgeon and clinical team to monitor my self-reported recovery, my pain levels, and my return to daily activities. Through my participation, I am also providing direct personal input into a larger quality improvement effort. The aggregated data from those efforts can, over time, improve the processes, protocols, device selection, and recovery techniques available to other patients in the future. Sharing my recovery and related levels of satisfaction, also educates surgeons and clinicians regarding best practices in patient care. Here is how we, as patients, can assist.

This blog is the final installment in a three-part series reporting on orthopaedic studies presented at the 2019 American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS) Annual Meeting and utilizing American Joint Replacement Registry (AJRR) registry data. All presentations are reported by Terry Stanton, senior science writer for AAOS Now.

Paper 878, “Correlation of Perioperative Periprosthetic Femur Fractures with Fixation Method” was presented by Bryan D. Springer, MD, vice chair of AJRR, on Friday, March 15, 2019 at the AAOS Annual Meeting in Las Vegas, Nevada. The study evaluated data from the AJRR over a five-year period and analyzed the relationship between femoral stem fixation and perioperative periprosthetic femur fracture (PPFx) requiring early revision total hip arthroplasty (THA) surgery. Analyses determined that cementless femoral fixation accounted for 93 percent of stems with early PPF. Dr. Springer said that patients with cementless stems were 2.6 times more likely to undergo early revision for PPF than those with cemented fixation, although the number of cemented stems in the analyzed population was small, making that finding not statistically significant.

This blog is the second in a three-part series reporting on orthopaedic studies presented at the 2019 American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS) Annual Meeting and utilizing American Joint Replacement Registry (AJRR) registry data. All presentations are reported by Terry Stanton, senior science writer for AAOS Now.

Paper 877, “An Early Look at Patient-Reported Outcome (PRO) Data” was presented by Kevin J. Bozic, MD, MBA, chair of the AJRR, on Thursday, March 14, 2019 at the AAOS Annual Meeting in Las Vegas, Nevada. The study offers an “early look” at patient-reported outcome (PRO) data from the AJRR, a part of the AAOS Registry Program. Dr. Bozic explained that the study covered differences between patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) from submitters and nonsubmitters and the response rates tallied so far for PROMs.

This blog is the first in a three-part series reporting on orthopaedic studies presented at the 2019 American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS) Annual Meeting and utilizing American Joint Replacement Registry (AJRR) registry data. All presentations are reported by Terry Stanton, senior science writer for AAOS Now.

Paper 145, “National Trends in Treatment of Femoral Neck Fracture” was presented by Bryan D. Springer, MD, vice chair of AJRR, on Tuesday, March 12, 2019 at the AAOS Annual Meeting in Las Vegas, Nevada. The study tracked trends in the treatment of femoral neck fractures (FNFs) based on data from the AJRR and found that although hemiarthroplasty remained the predominant mode of treatment over the five-year study period, use of total hip arthroplasty (THA) increased significantly during that time.

Year-long effort includes six pilot sites at major U.S. academic centers

This article was originally published in the March 2019 issue of AAOS Now, the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS) monthly news magazine.

AAOS, in collaboration with the Musculoskeletal Tumor Society (MSTS), announced the launch of a Musculoskeletal Tumor (MsT) Registry feasibility pilot to begin capturing data on orthopaedic oncology bone tumor procedures in a structured and scalable way. Six major U.S. academic centers were selected to participate in the year-long program: Cleveland Clinic Foundation, Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, Johns Hopkins Medicine, Ohio State University–The James Cancer Hospital, Stanford Health Care–Stanford Hospital, and University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics.

The American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS) Registry Program collects data within multiple orthopaedic anatomic registries, thereby creating the exciting potential for analytic insights that improve patient outcomes. In February 2019, AAOS launched the AAOS Registry Analytics Institute and that potential is now an attainable reality for many clinicians! The Institute gives clinicians and clinician-scientists the opportunity to submit proposals for analytic insights that are contained within its various Registries. For example, the American Joint Replacement Registry (AJRR) houses more than 1.5 million hip and knee procedures that can inform quality improvement. The goal of the Institute is to provide a resource to the scientific community to further understand and improve orthopaedic and musculoskeletal care by making information available to examine outcomes related to orthopaedic treatment.

Discover the AAOS Registry Program: New Registries, Research Opportunities, RegistryInsights Capabilities

The 2019 American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS) Annual Meeting, March 12-16, in Las Vegas, provides attendees with outstanding orthopaedic education (33 AMA PRA Category 1 Credits), networking, product introduction, and technology innovation all under one roof. The “Your Academy 2019” session on Thursday, March 14, at 10:30 a.m. offers the opportunity to hear AAOS leadership, including an incoming Presidential Address from Kristy L. Weber, MD. Read more in the 2019 Annual Meeting Program.

For those attendees that are also AAOS Registry Program participants, or thinking about participating, tailored offerings have been developed to meet your needs. These special offerings include presentations by registry experts, case studies by subscribers, poster submissions, access to knowledgeable Registry staff, the AAOS Registry Program Resource Center Booth, the User Group Network (Unet) Luncheon Meeting, and more.

The American Joint Replacement Registry (AJRR), part of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS) Registry Program, is the largest orthopaedic hip and knee registry in the world by annual procedure count. The AJRR 2018 Annual Report’s at-a-glance summary of key insights related to total hip arthroplasty (THA) and total knee arthroplasty (TKA) is shared below. This summary format and content is a perennial favorite of our blog readership. We have tracked and reported these measures in previous years and some trends have emerged. The blog also discusses some of the Registry’s new analytic capabilities and what they contribute to current and future Registry findings.

A patient-reported outcomes program can help you choose the right surgeon and facility.

In this article, the AAOS Registry Program’s Public Advisory Board (PAB) member Timothy Mojonnier shares his personal experience as a joint replacement surgery patient. This article is not a substitute for physician recommendations.

Guest Blogger:
Timothy M. Mojonnier
President, Mojonnier & Associates
Educator, Loyola University

My symptoms appeared ten years ago while playing tennis. As I moved towards the net, I felt a stabbing pain in my right knee, so severe that I could barely walk. Upon returning home and getting x-rays, my orthopaedic specialist delivered the news: I had osteoarthritis. She indicated it was likely that I would eventually require a knee replacement; however, for eight years I was able to avoid the surgeon’s scalpel through a combination of physical therapy and medication.