SVS quality initiative gathers data to improve vascular care
The Society of Vascular Surgery (SVS) Vascular Quality Initiative (VQI) launched in 2023 to improve the quality of vascular care.
Cardiovascular Business spoke with William P. Shutze, MD, SVS secretary and a vascular surgeon with Texas Vascular Associates in Plano, Texas, to learn more about the project's long-term vision.
"We want to elevate vascular to the highest care," Shutze, who is also a professor of medicine at Texas A&M College of Medicine, explained. "We want to decrease variation in care. We want it to be evidence-based. We want to be continuously improving on quality."
The SVS VQI was built for the real-time collection and reporting of patient outcomes. The registries that were created track information on pre-operative risk factors, intra-procedural variables, post-procedural outcomes and more.
The project has more than 7,000 participating physicians across a wide range of specialties, including vascular surgery cardiothoracic surgery and neurosurgery. More than 900 centers across North America and Singapore are participating, and they've already performed approximately 1.4 million procedures.
Shutze said the program offers value to the C-suite because of its ability to compare a health system's data with other centers performing the same procedures.
"We can say, 'look, you've dropped your length of stay one day.' 'You've dropped your mortality.' Those kind of things can really start having those value proposition talks and then let the C-suite know that, yeah, I spent some money, but it's worth it," Shutze said.
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: [email protected]