Nikki Kean is a freelance medical writer based in New Jersey.
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November 2019How Radiotherapy Works
Launched in 2016, the American Academy of Otolaryngology–Head and Neck Surgery (AAO-HNS) registry, Reg-ent, was initially formed to facilitate public quality reporting through the CMS MIPS program, including Quality, Promoting Interoperability (formerly known as Advancing Care Information), and Improvement Activities (IA).
Since its launch, the registry has grown to include more than 2,894 clinicians and is expected to grow more dramatically as it enters phase II with the addition of private payers, Epic sites, and research, according to the Reg-ent website (entnet.org).
Reg-ent promises to “allow members to participate in a variety of payer models … by demonstrating the quality and outcomes of our care, allowing appropriate valuation of our services, while driving ‘best care’ for our patients,” said James C. Denneny III, MD, executive vice president and CEO of the AAO–HNS Foundation.
How It Works
Reg-ent uses the FIGmd platform to extract data from the practice’s electronic health record (EHR). “Participating otolaryngologist-head and neck surgeons may then access the data and run queries on their own patient population to create practice patient registries and to benchmark practice performance and uncover potential areas for quality improvement. Results can also be compared to the larger aggregated data,” noted the academy.
One of the barriers to participation has been “actions taken by many EHR vendors in blocking data from our members’ practices or in charging prohibitive pricing to members who want to contribute their own data,” Dr. Denneny said. “We seem to be experiencing some improvements recently, particularly from those used by academic medical centers and hospital conglomerates.”
Reg-ent also monitors the quality of the data through “yearly randomized audit of a statistically valid sample of submissions made to CMS as part of its QCDR [qualified clinical data registry] review requirements. Continual accuracy checks assure the validity of Reg-ent data,” according to the academy website.
Each participant pays an initial application fee of $250 and $295 per clinician annually to support the ongoing development and maintenance of the registry.
Moving Forward
The real-world evidence accumulated through Reg-ent will allow otolaryngologists to define care for the disease processes otolaryngologists are the experts in, identify significant disease-related factors that will further research and allow more individualized care, improve the clinical research models for new devices and pharmaceuticals while lowering the costs and improving accuracy, and allow members access to a database for clinical research projects, Dr. Denneny said.