Nearly 2,000 registry professionals, quality experts, physicians and cardiovascular administrators will gather this week in Orlando, FL, for the NCDR 2018 Annual Conference (NCDR.18). With the theme, "Trailblazing the Future," this year's conference will focus on ways NCDR has gone beyond data collection to establish a new generation of cardiovascular care that uses data to guide quality improvement initiatives aimed at improving patient outcomes.

The three-day conference kicks off Wednesday, March 7, with preconference workshops. On Thursday morning, March 8, Douglas B. Fridsma, MD, PhD, president and CEO of the American Medical Informatics Association, will deliver the Ralph G. Brindis Keynote Lecture. In his lecture, titled "Interoperability: A Promise Kept (or not) to Transform Healthcare," Fridsma will discuss the barriers and opportunities for streamlining data collection and will present an outline for future data interoperability.

As the health care environment increasingly focuses on value-based care, the need to analyze and apply data to care decisions continues to be a high priority within the NCDR. "NCDR plays a critical role in our ever-changing health care system," says Ralph G. Brindis, MD, MPH, MACC, NCDR senior medical advisor. "The registries are an important linchpin for monitoring measures that are tied to value-based reimbursement and demonstrating quality in cardiovascular care."

Throughout the meeting, attendees will have the opportunity to gain new NCDR registry-specific and health care knowledge, take away best practices through networking, and discover tools and techniques to apply to quality improvement efforts. Registry-specific concurrent workshops throughout the conference will provide participants with a deep-dive into individual registries and provide updates and opportunities to discuss data quality issues. In addition, ACTION Registry, ICD Registry, CathPCI Registry and STS/ACC TVT Registry agendas will be divided into two, 40-minute sessions to allow more time for case scenarios.

"The NCDR is evolving to meet the demands of a changing health care environment," explains ACC Vice President C. Michael Valentine, MD, FACC. "We're looking at how to use that data to develop quality improvement innovations that will ensure we're delivering the best possible care to patients and improving outcomes."

Other not-to-miss sessions include Thursday afternoon's "What's New, What's Different," which will cover new and developing NCDR features. In other general sessions, participants will hear real-world examples of how NCDR participants are analyzing data to harness performance improvement and how stakeholders, such as private payers, state and federal government agencies, are using NCDR data to accelerate clinical performance.

Always a highlight of the conference, the annual awards ceremony on Friday afternoon will recognize this year's poster winners. NCDR received nearly 80 poster abstracts this year representing the eight hospital registries. Selected posters highlight how institutions have used NCDR data to inform grassroots quality improvement efforts.

Also new this year, the conference will close with an interactive session called "It's NCDR Jeopardy!" Selected contestants will answer questions across categories spanning each of the NCDR registries, broader areas like NCDR history and NCDR research, and quality improvement in a format similar to the game show.

For more information about NCDR.18, visit CVQuality.ACC.org/NCDR18.

Keywords: National Cardiovascular Data Registries, ACC18, ACC Annual Scientific Session, Quality Improvement, Registries, Data Collection, Medical Informatics

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