AAOS, AANS Launch the American Spine Registry

The American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS), and the American Association of Neurological Surgeons (AANS) are bringing their substantial resources together to create the American Spine Registry (ASR), which will be jointly owned and developed by both organizations. The ASR already has the country’s largest spine registry, the Quality Outcomes Database (QOD) Spine registry. Now, all North American spine surgeons can participate in a shared, quality data-collection platform.

“This is a great accomplishment for both specialties,” said Steven Glassman, M.D., orthopedic surgeon at Norton Leatherman Spine Center and co-chair of the ASR. “We are putting patient interests first and foremost through this collaboration. I commend everyone involved in this joint effort to move the needle and advance health care. This registry has the potential to lead to important improvements in quality of care and patient outcomes. It will provide data relevant to making critical clinical and resource-related decisions.”

“The shared vision for the ASR is to:

• Utilize data to inform the AANS and the AAOS care guidelines and to establish benchmarks to test clinical performance and the validity of various quality measures, which are efforts critical to a value-based health care system.
• Provide feedback to providers that allows them to continuously improve their practice and health care outcomes using methods applicable to all practice settings.
• Reduce data reporting burdens on physicians and allow re-use of data for regulatory requirements and continuous quality improvement programs.
• Help inform gaps in knowledge and define areas for further education and research.”

Anthony Asher, M.D., F.A.A.N.S., F.A.C.S., neurosurgeon at Carolina Neurosurgery & Spine Associates and co-chair of the ASR, explained the importance of the registry to OTW: “Spinal surgery is unique among subspecialties in that it is shared almost equally between orthopedic surgeons and neurosurgeons. While this might be seen as a hurdle to the development of a national spine registry, leadership at the AAOS and AANS saw this as a singular opportunity. While both societies have pursued registry efforts over the past 10 years, their capabilities in the area of spine surgery are largely complementary rather than overlapping.”

“AAOS has developed a robust infrastructure to support registry development whereas AANS has a 10-year experience through the QOD registry, with expertise specific to spinal surgery. Surgeon leaders in both societies saw this as a chance to put patients ahead of each organization’s individual needs, and to create a broad national registry with the potential to improve patient care across the spectrum of spinal surgery in the U.S.”

“Our success in transitioning to higher quality, more sustainable care delivery on the national level will be largely dependent on our ability to dismantle legacy barriers and more routinely share essential information across medical disciplines and healthcare organizations to generate new and important insights. In that regard, this relationship has the potential to serve as a model for a more responsible and meaningful data collection standard going forward.”

“Over the next six months, the ASR committees and staff will work to adapt existing registry infrastructure to the specific needs of spinal surgery. This will include improved diagnostic specificity and procedural detail, as compared to previous registry capabilities. ASR will also move to transition existing QOD registry sites to the upgraded platform with particular emphasis on continuity of enrollment and preservation of existing QOD data. Early next year the ASR will begin to enroll new sites, leveraging existing agreements and capabilities in centers now participating in the American Joint Replacement Registry (AJRR), AAOS’ hip and knee arthroplasty registry that includes over 1,300 sites.”