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Home / Articles / 2017 VQI Participation Awards – See Final Results

2017 VQI Participation Awards – See Final Results

2017 VQI Participation Awards

The SVS PSO is pleased to provide you with the results of the 2017 VQI Participation Awards. This award recognizes the importance of active participation in the VQI as a critical component of our quality improvement mission. This is the third year of the VQI Participation Award program, and we are very encouraged by the 2017 results. In particular, the improvement in the median rate of reporting for long-term follow-up, which increased from 61% for 2014 follow-up last year, to 70% for 2015 follow-up for this year’s reporting period. We congratulate all of our centers for their hard work and dedication, which led to this improvement.

Click here for the Participation Award results for 2017

VQI centers are eligible to receive up to 3 “Stars” depending on the extent of their participation in three categories:

  • Rate of long-term follow-up (LTFU) reporting
  • Attendance (focused on physicians) at regional quality group meetings
  • Number of vascular procedure registries subscribed

These categories were selected by the SVS PSO Governing Council to emphasize the importance of center participation in three key areas. LTFU reporting demonstrates a commitment to monitoring the ongoing effectiveness of treatment, assessing potential problems and providing optimal medical management. LTFU allows a more meaningful assessment of quality (as opposed to only perioperative outcomes), and is a cornerstone of VQI. Physician and staff attendance at semi-annual regional quality group meetings is critical to drive discussions of outcome variation, to develop regional QI projects, and to encourage multi-center participation in outcomes analysis and QI efforts. Finally, participation in multiple procedure registries provides more opportunities for learning and improvement. It should be emphasized that this award does not represent the quality of care delivered, but rather is a measure of VQI participation, which we hope will translate into improved quality of care long-term.

In order to be eligible for the 2017 VQI Participation Award, centers must have been a VQI member for at least 12 months. Thus, centers that enrolled in 2017 are not eligible for this year’s VQI Participation Award. The goal for LTFU in VQI is reporting at one year after the index procedure. Since follow-up times vary, however, LTFU rate is calculated based on any follow-up reported after at least 9 months. For the 2017 VQI Participation Awards, LTFU is calculated based on procedures done in 2015 to allow two full years to record LTFU after the procedure. (Note that for centers that joined VQI in 2016, however, LTFU is calculated based on procedures done in 2016, allowing only one year to obtain LTFU for the 2017 Participation Award.)

For 2017, there were 359 centers eligible for VQI Participation Awards, and we are pleased that 42 received 3 Stars, 91 received 2 Stars and 98 received 1 Star. Your center’s results in the Award Program for 2017 are listed here, along with the detailed point scoring system used to calculate the number of Stars awarded.

We plan to recognize centers that received the 2017 VQI Participation Award here on the VQI website and in other publications. No matter how many “Stars” your center received, we hope that you will work to improve your participation in 2018. LTFU reporting is considered so important by the SVS PSO that we have created a toolkit based on lessons-learned from centers that have achieved high follow-up, which we hope you will find useful. It can be found in the resource tab of the VQI website: http://www.vascularqualityinitiative.org/vqi-resource-library/long-term-follow-up/Further, we are able to provide staff coaching and peer mentoring for centers that struggle with LTFU reporting. 

Sincerely yours,

Alex Shepard, MD, Chair, VQI Participation Award Committee
Larry Kraiss, MD, Chair, SVS PSO Governing Council
Jens Eldrup-Jorgensen, MD, SVS PSO Medical Director

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