AUA to launch nationwide clinical data registry

The AUA said it will launch a national, specialty-wide urologic registry designed to measure and report health care quality and patient outcomes as well as provide data to help identify patterns and trends in the diagnosis and treatment of prostate cancer and eventual outcomes related to treatment options.

The AUA Quality (AQUA) Registry will be launched in 2014. It will initially focus on prostate cancer and will, for the first time, enable urologists to review their practice patterns and outcomes in comparison with their peers, according to the AUA. It will gradually expand to include other urologic conditions.

“The AUA AQUA Registry will be a powerful tool for urologists to observe the course of a disease, understand variations in treatment and outcomes, and examine factors influencing prognosis and quality of life. It can also help urologists describe patient care patterns, monitor safety and harm, and enable them to review and compare data with their peers,” explained AUA Secretary Gopal Badlani, MD, of Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem, NC.

Additionally, participating urologists will be kept informed of AUA clinical guidelines and will receive feedback regarding their individual- and/or practice-level performance on a range of process and outcome quality measures, benchmarked against the broader registry data. These will help facilitate both the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ Physician Quality Reporting System (PQRS) and potentially regional and national certification requirements. AQUA’s clinical focus will be longitudinal follow-up of patients with prostate cancer and include a personalized portal for patients to report self-perceived outcomes on their quality of life.

“Both physicians and patients will benefit from the AQUA Registry inclusion of patient-reported outcomes that have, for the most part, been a void in registries to date,” said AUA Data Committee Chair J. Quentin Clemens, MD, of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. “These outcomes are recognized as the most appropriate instruments to assess the effectiveness of health care interventions from the patient’s perspective.”

The AUA AQUA Registry will be implemented in a phased manner over 2 years in terms of number of participating practices, scope, and functionality.

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