FORCE-TJR Certified as Qualified Clinical Data Registry (Orthopedics This Week)
Since 2010 the details of 30,000 total joint patients have been tracked by FORCE-TJR (Function and Outcomes Research for Comparative Effectiveness in Total Joint Replacement). Now, FORCE-TJR has been certified as a Qualified Clinical Data Registry (QCDR).
As part of this certification, says the June 4, 2015 news release, FORCE-TJR has developed new measures that are not related to The Physician Quality Reporting System (PQRS). These include:
- Pain and functional status assessment for hip and knee replacements
- Improvement in pain and function after hip and knee replacements
- Mental health assessment for patients who undergo hip and knee replacements
- Assessment and improvement on patients with osteoarthritis in the hip or knee
“The new QCDR designation allows FORCE-TJR to define new quality measures, including patient-reported outcomes, and to submit these data to CMS on behalf of our members—without any additional data collection. The data serve both their internal quality monitoring and meet the CMS mandate,” said Patricia Franklin, M.D., FORCE-TJR’s registry director.
David Ayers, M.D., co-lead of FORCE-TJR and chair of the Department of Orthopedics and Physical Rehabilitation at UMass Medical School, told OTW, “Our biggest opportunity is that we are transitioning away from a federally funded grant program which was funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) for the first four years, and AHRQ defined the number of hospitals and surgeons who were able to participate in first cohort. We are transitioning to a public/private partnership that allows FORCE-TJR to accept an unlimited number of new members, and as a result, we are expanding rapidly.”
“Our other challenge is that 40% of surgeons and physicians are not participating in the PQRS program. Because the healthcare system is transitioning from a volume-based reimbursement system to a value-based reimbursement system, clinicians are becoming frustrated that they cannot build their own infrastructure needed to collect data. They often don’t realize a program such as FORCE can facilitate collecting what they need to participate in the PQRS program, and can also collect information needed for bundled payment programs, and to explicitly show the value of the care that they provide their patients. Surgeons and physicians need to know that by joining FORCE-TJR, our method will make the entire process exceedingly easy because we collect information for them.”
“FORCE-TJR is expanding more rapidly than ever because more and more surgeons are recognizing the benefits of our program and want to join.”