This has been a year of tremendous growth, change and achievement for the ACR, and I have been fortunate to lead the ACR in these endeavors. The ACR and ARHP, including the ACR Executive Committee, the ACR Board of Directors, standing and special committee chairs and hundreds of dedicated volunteers, have contributed to this growth and achievement with incredible skill, enthusiasm and foresight. As I reflect on my experience as president, I would like to share with you what is happening at the ACR and how it is Advancing Rheumatology!
Achieving New Heights with RISE: Harnessing Big Data
For several years, the ACR has been investing in the Rheumatology Informatics System for Effectiveness (RISE) Registry. RISE extracts rheumatology patient data from the electronic health record (EHR) of a given practice (e.g., diagnosis, medication, disease activity and other clinical information). The data are passively collected.
Quality measures, particularly those developed by the Committee on Quality of Care (QOC), are built into RISE. Because RISE is a federally approved Qualified Clinical Data Registry (QCDR), it fulfills many of the quality metrics required by MACRA (Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015) and will simplify MACRA reporting requirements for practices connected to RISE. As of the end of September, RISE was connected to 117 practices and 472 providers, and has accumulated more than 3 million patient encounters, including more than 1 million visits attributable to patients with RA.
The Committee on Registries and Health Information Technology (RHIT) has worked tirelessly to create RISE, and although many volunteers have contributed, I want to acknowledge Dino Kazi, MD, and Jinoos Yazdany, MD, as well as Rachel Myslinski (ACR staff), for their above-and-beyond efforts to make this registry a reality. The RISE team is currently streamlining the data analytic process and will be ready to accept research queries in the first half of 2017.
RISE has vast potential as a limitless source of valuable clinical data that can inform by computational analysis to reveal patterns, trends and associations. In this way, not only does RISE help individual practices and providers review their own data and benchmark them to regional and national standards, RISE can also help health policy researchers assess healthcare delivery. Ultimately, RISE will help improve the care of individual patients and the rheumatology population as a whole.
The RISE team is currently streamlining the data analytic process & will be ready to accept research queries in the first half of 2017.
Advocacy
The steady stream of government policies and proposals, most especially MACRA, biosimilars and the Part B demonstration project, has kept ACR/ARHP volunteers very busy with advocacy. We have invested in lobbying activities for regulatory advocacy to complement our ongoing legislative lobbying activities, which has really helped us navigate this demanding territory.