Today, the rate of serious complications from anesthesia is low but not zero. Complications can occur such as inadequate pain management which may determine a patient’s willingness to undergo future procedures. Also, patients who experience adverse outcomes may require additional resources and decrease the efficiency of healthcare.
The American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) an important source for education and information set out to develop a registry to help patients find data on anesthesia. As a result, the Anesthesia Quality Institute (AQI) created by ASA, set out to improve perioperative care by developing the “National Anesthesia Clinical Outcomes Registry” (NACOR).
Presently, AQI is recruiting anesthesia practices to submit administrative, clinical, and outcome data. So far, 150 practices are participating in NACOR representing more than 10 percent of anesthesiologists and surgical facilities in the U.S. Today, NACOR includes more than 4 million cases and it is anticipated that that NACOR will double in size within the year.
An opportunity also exists to improve patient-centered anesthesia outcomes using NACOR that will be used to create benchmarks for measuring patient satisfaction with anesthesia. This will be done by analyzing the data to determine the variation in outcomes across providers. Identification of outcome variations will require the ASA education materials to be bundled based on best practices in order to close identified gaps in knowledge.
Not only will educational materials and ongoing performance reports be sent to AQI practices and providers, but in addition, gap analysis will lead to educational media targeted at patients themselves. This will mean that patients will be able to improve their own safety in the perioperative period. In the future, changes in patient-centered outcomes will be tracked over time to determine which educational interventions are most effective for the patients and providers.
For more information contact, Richard Dutton at r.dutton@asahq.org or call 847-268-9192.