Vascular Quality Improvement Initiative expands SVS' focus on clinical outcomes

The Society for Vascular Surgery® (SVS) announced a new quality initiative to improve the care of patients with vascular disease. The Vascular Quality Improvement Initiative includes a registry and regional study groups to analyze the data collected from the registry. The initiative expands SVS' focus on clinical outcomes and benchmarked reporting. SVS is partnering with M2S on this project which was originally established by the Vascular Study Group of New England.

"The Vascular Quality Improvement Initiative enhances SVS' mission to assist its members in understanding and improving patient outcomes by encouraging the collection, aggregation, and analysis of clinical data," said Robert Zwolak, SVS president. "Through this partnership, SVS oversees the electronic registry and manages the Patient Safety Organization. This organization has oversight from a scientific advisory board comprised of SVS and regional group representatives, with Jack Conenwett, MD, Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center and former SVS president, serving as its medical director. M2S provides the web-based registry platform for data collection and analysis."

The partnership with M2S positions SVS as the leader in vascular outcomes tracking by providing a platform for its members to analyze outcomes, reinforce best practices, and share quality improvement efforts across regions. Currently the Vascular Quality Improvement Initiative has 30 centers across 11 states and Canada. In addition to the 20 institutions in the New England regional group, there are two new regional study groups in the Carolinas, led by Jeb Hallett, MD of Roper St. Francis, and in Texas, led by Mark Davies, MD at Methodist Hospital, Houston. Additional groups are forming in Florida, California, New Jersey, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Michigan.

"We are excited to partner with SVS to provide the platform for the Vascular Quality Initiative. M2S has been committed to improving vascular patient outcomes for over ten years with our advanced imaging technology. We believe the Vascular Quality Initiative, combined with standardized pre-operative and post-operative imaging, will significantly improve patient care," said Greg Lange, president and chief operating officer of M2S.

The Vascular Quality Improvement Initiative utilizes MDS's secure, web-based system, Clinical Data Pathways, for data entry and report generation. Through Clinical Data Pathways participants generate real-time benchmarked reports on six vascular procedures for major outcomes and processes of care to allow for the continuous assessment of them compared to a blinded group of peers based on key performance measures.