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An official publication of the ACR and the ARP serving rheumatologists and rheumatology professionals

Registries and Rheumatology Quality

Kristen McNiff, MPH  |  Issue: June 2010  |  

Dawn Antoline, editor
E-mail: [email protected]

Phone: (201) 748-7757

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The Rheumatologist welcomes letters to the editor. Letters should be 500 words or less, and may be edited for length and style. Include your name, title, and organization, as well as a daytime phone number.

How Can I Participate?

Check out the RCR at www.rheumatology.org/rcr. You might be surprised at how useful the RCR could be to you and your practice. For instance, the RCR will soon launch a patient portal for collecting new and follow-up patient questionnaire data. Consider the many—and expanding—benefits of RCR participation as you weigh the resources required to participate. You will have access to structured data from your practice to use for population management activities, as well as quality measure reports for self-assessment, benchmarking, and continuous improvement. If you choose, the same data submission can be used to report for PQRI. The RCR also serves as a data source for AIM: RA and AIM: Gout, the ACR practice-improvement modules approved by the American Board of Internal Medicine for 20 maintenance-of-certification points.

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Participate in the RCR. Registration is streamlined and easy, allowing you to move quickly into data entry. There is no charge to register or participate in the RCR. If you have an EHR, let us know if you are interested in connecting to the RCR electronically.

Propose future enhancements to or uses of the RCR, including disease modules, data-driven improvement projects, or research topics.

I look forward to working with ACR leadership and committee members, as well as to the active engagement of the ACR membership, as we continue to develop our registry initiatives. Please submit questions or comments related to the RCR to rcr@rheumatol ogy.org.

Kristen McNiff is vice president of Registry, Quality, and Healthcare Informatics at the ACR.

Reference

  1. Galvin R. A Deficiency of Will or Ambition? A Conversation with Donald Berwick. Health Affairs. 2005;24:w1–w9.

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