Enrollment in the American College of Cardiology (ACC) National Cardiovascular Data Registry (NCDR) increased after the announcement that participation would be considered by U.S. News & World Report (USNWR) for its hospital rankings, according to a new analysis. Even with this bump, only about one third of eligible hospitals participate in the NCDR registries.
The study was published Feb. 10 in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) Open Network.[1]
The ACC set up the NCDR because public reporting of procedures and outcomes is intended to promote healthcare quality improvement and transparency by providing consumers, payers, clinicians and healthcare institutions access to information on hospital performance. However, clinical registry data are not used frequently for public reporting because of the effort involved to collect the data. The NCDR includes the ACC cardiac catheterization-percutaneous coronary intervention (CathPCI) and implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD) registries.
Consumers can access hospital-specific data on the ACC’s CardioSmart Find Your Heart a Home website permitting individuals to search by hospital name and location and see the institutions’ public reporting status by registry.
In 2016, the news magazine U.S. News & World Report announced a transparency component in the calculation of its cardiology and heart surgery specialty rankings. Hospitals could receive up to 3 percentage points by participating in public reporting programs maintained by the ACC and Society of Thoracic Surgeons (STS). In March 2016, a month after the USNWR announcement, the number of hospitals enrolled increased from 240 to 376 hospitals (56.7%), the study's authors wrote.
By the end of 2016, of 1,531 eligible institutions, 485 hospitals (31.8%) had elected to participate. Of these, 310 hospitals (63.9%) were enrolled in public reporting for CathPCI and ICD registries, while 175 hospitals (36.1%) participated in one registry. By May 2017, 561 of 1,747 eligible hospitals (32.1%) had chosen to participate. Overall, more hospitals participated in the CathPCI registry (531 hospitals) than the ICD registry (374 hospitals). Among 561 participating hospitals, few (4 hospitals [0.7%]) dropped out of the program after the first year of public reporting.
Read more details from the study.
Related ACC NCDR content:
ACC updates data registries to track COVID-19’s impact on heart disease patients
Ambulatory CV care in the U.S. is improving
Unprotected left main PCI remains rare in U.S.
NCDR report sheds light on CV trends
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Dave Fornell has covered healthcare for more than 17 years, with a focus in cardiology and radiology. Fornell is a 5-time winner of a Jesse H. Neal Award, the most prestigious editorial honors in the field of specialized journalism. The wins included best technical content, best use of social media and best COVID-19 coverage. Fornell was also a three-time Neal finalist for best range of work by a single author. He produces more than 100 editorial videos each year, most of them interviews with key opinion leaders in medicine. He also writes technical articles, covers key trends, conducts video hospital site visits, and is very involved with social media. E-mail: dfornell@innovatehealthcare.com