‘Good Outcomes Not Good Enough’

Anton Sidawy, MD, MPH, FACS, professor and chair of the Department of Surgery at the George Washington University Medical Center, discussed how SVS is working with the American College of Surgeons to develop certification for vascular surgery centers. He addressed the need for organizations such as SVS to take the initiative in defining quality and value for the field, in no small part because payment models are shifting from the rewarding of volume to the rewarding of value.

Defining value may come from many sources: government, private insurers, and the public. Unless SVS has a strong voice in defining value, it may find itself not pleased with the results, according to Dr. Sidawy.

Then Fred A. Weaver, MD, chair of the SVS Patient Safety Organization and professor of surgery and chief of the vascular surgery division at Keck School of Medicine of University of Southern California, described the current state of the Vascular Quality Initiative. This is an SVS database whose 12 registries have gathered demographic, clinical, procedural and outcomes data from more than 500,000 vascular procedures performed in North America in 18 regional quality groups.

Currently, the VQI is comprised of 571 centers in the United States and Canada, with one in Singapore. Of particular importance, the makeup of the practitioners involved in the VQI is very diverse in specialty training, with only 41% of the membership being vascular surgeons.

In the near future, three more VQI registries are coming, according to Dr. Weaver: An ultrasound registry (in concert with the Society of Vascular Ultrasound); Venous Stenting; and Vascular Medicine (in concert with the American Heart Association).

Dr. Weaver emphasized how tracking outcomes is crucial for both vascular surgeons and certified vascular surgery centers to assess and improve their performance and how the VQI is critical to these endeavors.

Finally, Larry Kraiss, MD, chair of the SVS Quality Council and professor and chief of the vascular surgery division at the University of Utah, presented the goals of the new SVS council and described how the council is expanding the quality mission to include appropriate use criteria in addition to the long-standing clinical practice guidelines the SVS produces.

Dr. Kraiss elaborated how Appropriate Use Criteria (AUC) perform a substantially different role than that of Clinical Practice Guidelines (CPG).

Since 2006, SVS has developed 13 active guidelines, with more on the way. Guidelines provide positive yes/no statements with regard to treatment decision-making. However, many patients fall outside the guidelines, often due to comorbidities or other confounding factors, and appropriate use criteria are vital in these cases to evaluate where on a spectrum the patient fits for making a decision with regard to performing an operation or the use of a device.

Appropriate use criteria can be developed through the use of risk assessment to determine where on the spectrum of safety and effectiveness a particular patient falls with regard to a particular procedure or device. A major role of the new SVS Quality Council is to develop appropriate use criteria using outcome tools such as VQI and to provide recommendations as to how individuals and institutions could improve their performance by taking into account risk factors and assess infrastructural needs.

“The SVS board has authorized development of AUC in particular areas,” said Dr. Kraiss. “This process with be closely tied with updating the CPG. The first commissioned AUC will be to address intermittent claudication. But I invite the membership to participate in this process, especially on the panels, which can have up to 17 members, and we envision AUC coming out in carotid intervention, AAA management, and venous disease,” he added.