More than 3,000 participants took part in the virtual ACC Quality Summit, Sept. 29 – Oct. 1. The annual event geared toward hospitals and institutions involved with ACC’s NCDR registries and ACC Accreditation Services provided unique opportunities for clinicians, administrators, executive leadership and other stakeholders to learn more about registry and accreditation resources, hone leadership skills, share best practices in quality improvement and engage in discussions on hot topics ranging from shared decision-making to addressing health equity.

The Summit featured 26 virtual education sessions across three channels and 18 on-demand presentations. Highlights included a keynote from Cheryl Pegus, MD, MPH, FACC, who shared her thoughts on the current and future role of innovation in health care as part of the opening plenary session. She stressed the importance of creating easy access to health care, noting that “the future is getting health care to people before they even know they’re sick.” She also underscored the importance of using innovation to address social determinants of health and creating tools to help people “engage in taking care of themselves.

Pamela S. Douglas, MD, MACC, who gave the Ralph G. Brindis Lecture, also discussed innovation, focusing her remarks on the use of transformative technologies and the future cardiovascular imaging. “We need the right patient at the right time, but we need the right test and quality in how images are interpreted and communicated to the care team and eventually translated into better patient care,” she said. Other sessions explored topics specific to NCDR registries and ACC Accreditation Services, like new heart failure and electrophysiology trends, best practices for patient selection for left atrial appendage occlusion and atrial fibrillation ablation, how to articulate the value proposition of registries and accreditation, and more.

With 92 abstract poster sessions, real-world quality improvement best practices were also front and center. This year’s posters highlighted numerous activities taking place in facilities and practices across the country to improve quality of care and patient outcomes. In one study, Jeffrey A. Goss, FNP-c, MSN, APP, director of heart failure for Intermountain Healthcare, and colleagues explored ways to notify pharmacies about discontinued medication, while another study from the University of Maryland Medical Center explored the distribution of a clinician team roster with names, pictures and role of each team member to help patients admitted to the primary cardiology service.

In addition, the following three posters received awards:

• Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Cost and Readmission Rates of Heart Failure Patients: A Community Hospital Perspective
  Kyle A. Ulversoy, BA, and Jonathon Murrow, MD, FACC
  Medical College of Georgia
• Cardiogenic Shock: ‘Stage, Page and Engage.’ Real-Time Continuous EMR-Based Staging With Automated Alerts and Multidisciplinary Management
  Krithika Krishnarao, DO
  Mayo Clinic Jacksonville, FL
• An APP-Lead Program to Address CVD Risk Reduction in Patients With Diabetes
  Nina Mirachi, PA-C, MBA
  Cardiology Consultants of Philadelphia, PA

Overall, the Quality Summit highlighted the many ways NCDR and Accreditation Services continue to support the ACC’s efforts to provide the highest-quality, cost-effective care to patients worldwide. ACC President Dipti Itchhaporia, MD, FACC, said it best during her opening remarks: “Data leads to knowledge, and knowledge is power. By harnessing the power of the data at our fingertips we can demonstrate in real time how new clinical guidelines are being used in patient care. We can also find opportunities to close gaps in health disparities and solve for health equity – a strategic priority for the ACC and a personal goal of my own.”

Clinical Topics: Arrhythmias and Clinical EP, COVID-19 Hub, Heart Failure and Cardiomyopathies, Implantable Devices, SCD/Ventricular Arrhythmias, Atrial Fibrillation/Supraventricular Arrhythmias, Acute Heart Failure

Keywords: Quality Summit, National Cardiovascular Data Registries, SARS-CoV-2, Electrophysiology, Registries, Heart Failure, Accreditation, Quality of Health Care, Social Determinants of Health, COVID-19, Health Equity, Leadership, Quality Improvement

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