title: The Society for Vascular Surgery Vascular Quality Initiative.
abstract: The Society for Vascular Surgery (SVS) Vascular Quality Initiative (VQI) is designed to improve the quality, safety, effectiveness, and cost of vascular health care. It uses the structure of a Patient Safety Organization to permit collection of patient-identified information but protect benchmarked comparisons from legal discovery. The SVS VQI is uniquely organized as a distributed network of regional quality groups to facilitate local translation of registry data into practice change while maintaining the power of a national registry. Detailed data specific to each commonly performed open and endovascular procedure are collected, both in-hospital and at ≥ 1 year of follow-up. Quality measures are reported to physicians and hospitals, which allow anonymous risk-adjusted benchmarking within regions or nationally. All specialties that perform vascular procedures are included, and international participation is encouraged. This review describes the current status of the SVS VQI.
authors.affiliation: Section of Vascular Surgery, Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, Lebanon, NH 03756, USA. j.cronenwett@hitchcock.org
authors.forename: Jack L
authors.initials: JL
authors.lastname: Cronenwett
authors.forename: Larry W
authors.initials: LW
authors.lastname: Kraiss
authors.forename: Richard P
authors.initials: RP
authors.lastname: Cambria
mesh_terms: D019985:Benchmarking / Q000592:standards; D006801:Humans; D010043:Outcome and Process Assessment, Health Care / Q000592:standards*; D061214:Patient Safety / Q000592:standards; D017410:Practice Guidelines as Topic / Q000592:standards; D018907:Privacy; D016730:Program Development; D058996:Quality Improvement / Q000592:standards*; D012040:Regional Health Planning / Q000592:standards; D012042:Registries; D018570:Risk Assessment; D012955:Societies, Medical / Q000592:standards*; D016896:Treatment Outcome; D014481:United States; D014656:Vascular Surgical Procedures / Q000009:adverse effects / Q000592:standards*