As the health care system shifts its focus toward value-based care, quality improvement initiatives have made their mark. For these programs to be successful, institutions must continuously analyze data.

For cardiovascular disease, NCDR provides hospitals with tools to measure care, achieve quality improvement goals and reduce health care costs. The ACTION Registry is the leading source for acute coronary syndrome data used by health systems, hospitals and cardiovascular care teams to measure performance and improve quality. But all of that data requires dedicated professionals to translate data into quality improvement initiatives.

“The data team understands the value of data and definitions, which is vital to an efficient data abstraction process,” says Jan Willman, BSN, RN, a cardiovascular data analyst with Aurora Health Care, a 15-hospital system in eastern Wisconsin. “Participating in the NCDR registries provides us with robust and consistent data to be used in process improvement, providing feedback to clinicians who may be missing the mark at times.”

In 2017, more than 300 institutions received ACC’s annual ACTION Registry Performance Achievement Award. The program, which celebrates its 10th anniversary this year, recognizes hospitals that demonstrate sustained, top-level performance by using the ACTION Registry to improve outcomes.

Aurora Health Care was a Platinum award recipient in 2017, after receiving the Gold award since 2008. Aurora received the Platinum designation for its efforts in maintaining improvements in discharging patients with prescriptions for angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors or angiotensin receptor blockers. The institution also achieved improvements in the evaluation of left ventricular ejection fraction, systolic function and pre-hospital electrocardiograms. What spurred this improvement? Benchmarking. Willman says that when hospital officials saw the facility was not in the top percentile, they created their own “Best Practice Box” to ensure that ACTION Registry measures were reviewed before discharging each patient.

Similarly, at Sentara Healthcare, a 12-hospital system in Virginia and North Carolina, communication and data analysis were the key to success. In 2017, eight of its 12 hospitals were Platinum awardees, demonstrating how larger organizations can make quality improvements both within an individual hospital and across a large system. “We worked to improve and standardize our approach to care for these patients to ensure they received the same level of care regardless of the location,” says Candace Landis, BSN, RN, Sentara ACTION Registry site manager. “The ACTION Registry acts as a safety net for our medical staff in ensuring patients have everything they need when it is time for discharge.”

Keywords: Benchmarking, Quality Improvement, Acute Coronary Syndrome, Stroke Volume, Quality of Health Care, Registries, Electrocardiography, National Cardiovascular Data Registries, ACC18, ACC Annual Scientific Session, ACTION Registry

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