McLeod honored for vascular surgeons’ work
The Society for Vascular Surgery’s Vascular Quality Initiative (SVS VQI) has awarded McLeod Health three stars for its active participation in the Registry Participation Program. Three stars is the highest level of recognition by the SVS VQI.
The mission of the SVS VQI is to improve patient safety and the quality of vascular care delivery by providing web-based collection, aggregation and analysis of clinical data submitted in registry format for all patients undergoing specific vascular treatments.
Participating centers can earn up to three stars based on actions that lead to better patient care, including:
· The completeness of long-term, follow-up reporting, based on the percentage of patients for whom they have at least nine months of follow-up data
· Physician attendance at semi-annual meetings of a regional quality group
· Initiation of quality improvement activities based on VQI data
· The number of vascular registries in which the center participates
The Vascular Quality Initiative operates 14 vascular registries. McLeod Vascular Associates participates in eight of these registries with demographic, clinical, procedural and outcomes data. Each record includes information from the patient’s initial hospitalization and one-year follow-up. The procedures performed by the McLeod Vascular Surgeons contribute to the data collected from the more than 936,000 vascular procedures performed in the U.S. and in Canada.
“The participation from McLeod in a national quality registry allows us to better understand and benchmark our results compared to other centers within the Carolina region as well as nationally,” said Dr. Eva Rzucidlo, McLeod vascular surgeon. “We receive biannual dashboards and regular performance reports, so our data can be used to support quality improvement initiatives and enhance the delivery of vascular care.”
McLeod Vascular Associates also had representation at biannual regional meetings, which allows physicians of different specialties, nurses, data managers, quality officers and others to share information and ideas, and learn from each other in a positive and supportive environment.
“At McLeod, our goal is to provide extraordinary care for our patients,” said Dr. Christopher Cunningham, McLeod vascular surgeon. “This award is an example of how the McLeod Vascular Team always pushes our profession to the next level of growth. I’m so very proud of our teams at McLeod Health Seacoast and McLeod Regional Medical Center and this accomplishment.”
“Hard-working, dedicated organizations such as McLeod Health are key to the success of the vascular registries,” said Vascular Quality Initiative Medical Director Dr. Jens Eldrup-Jorgensen. “The work we do to build and maintain the registries for researcher use is crucial to health and outcomes for vascular patients. Like the old saying says, ‘if you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.’”
The physicians of McLeod Vascular Associates care for patients in Florence, Hartsville, Little River, Myrtle Beach, Sumter, and Sunset Beach, N.C.