Vascular Quality Initiative
The Vascular Quality Initiative (VQI) is a collaborative of regional quality groups collecting and analyzing vascular surgery data in an effort to improve patient outcomes. VQI participants share their data to develop quality improvement initiatives designed to standardize processes, reduce costs, decrease complication rates, and to improve patient care.
The Society for Vascular Surgeons’ Patient Safety Organization (SVS PSO) has partnered with M2S to provide its secure, cloud-based database, M2S PATHWAYS for data collection and analysis. The M2S PATHWAYS clinical database can be used to generate real-time benchmarked reports of major outcomes and complications, as well as longitudinal tracking of center performance compared to a chosen group of centers.
The VQI uses detailed procedure-specific data from vascular registries to provide greater insight into vascular outcomes compared with other surgical registries. The VQI collects preoperative risk factors, intra-operative variables, post-operative outcomes and one year follow up data in 12 major vascular procedure modules.
The registry modules are:
- Carotid Artery Stent
- Carotid Endarterectomy
- Open AAA Repair
- Endovascular AAA Repair
- Hemodialysis Access
- IVC Filter
- Lower Extremity Bypass-Infra-Inguinal
- Lower Extremity Bypass-Supra-Inguinal
- Lower Extremity Amputation
- Peripheral Vascular Intervention
- Thoracic and Complex EVAR
- Varicose Vein
The University of Rochester’s Vascular Surgery Division participates in all 12 vascular procedure registry modules. Michael Stoner, M.D., URMC’s Chief of Vascular Surgery, and Matthew Mell, M.D., of Stanford University have developed a suite of Epic EHR note templates to facilitate accurate data collection at the point of care. Get more information about VQI & Epic Electronic Health Record Integration.
In collaboration with the Epic Systems Corporation, these templates have been made available in a format to allow direct importation into other hospitals’ Epic EHRs. The note templates provide structured documentation for collection of patient history, procedural and follow-up variables across VQI modules. The immediate benefit of importing the templates in the EHR is that the data abstracter can easily access VQI data elements which significantly reduces the labor required for chart abstraction, ensures the integrity of the data and is an important step towards fully automated VQI data collection from the EHR.
The VQI positions the Society for Vascular Surgery and American Venous Forum as leaders in vascular quality improvement by providing a platform for members to analyze outcomes, determine best practices, and collaborate with peers on quality improvement efforts regionally and nationally. Learn more about Vascular Quality Initiative. The medical profession as whole benefits by advancing the understanding of specific treatment options for vascular disease, ultimately, benefiting vascular patients. VQI centers have seen measurably lower lengths of stay and costs for vascular patients compared to national in-patient averages.