American Physical Therapy Association Outcomes Registry

The Physical Therapy Outcomes Registry, an initiative of the American Physical Therapy Association, uses data from the profession, for the profession, to help you elevate your patient care, visualize your value, and define your future.

Here’s what that means for you and your practice:

Health care is changing—don’t get left behind.

The last century saw a progression from “expert-based care” to care based on medical evidence. Not only the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) but also private payers and even large employers are focusing on value-based care. The Registry will help you—and the profession as a whole—visualize the value of your services for payers.

It’s made by PTs, for PTs.

The APTA Physical Therapy Outcomes Registry is the only EHR-agnostic, nationwide physical therapy registry. It aggregates data from the profession, for the profession. Imagine the possibility to compare your outcomes with similar facilities or patient populations in other states and across the nation. Envision the powerful influence huge amounts of outcomes data could have on PT practice, collaborative care, clinical practice guidelines, and payment.

All the cool kids are doing it.

Did you know there are more than 110 Qualified Clinical Data Registries in the United States? Urology, cardiology, ophthalmology, the list goes on. The data from their registries is literally changing the way they practice, as they learn which interventions lead to the best results. And physicians are jazzed about it.

Randomized controlled trials take too long.

Traditional research is extremely valuable, but it takes a long time to conduct, write, and publish. And sometimes the results don’t match your patient population’s unique characteristics. “Real-time” registry data not only helps you interpret your own practice’s performance—it can help contribute to outcomes research.

It’s powered by a “secret squirrel” (that’s what we call it, anyway).

The Physical Therapy Outcomes Registry “secret squirrel” uses machine learning and natural language processing to sift and sort the data directly from your EHR. No manual entry required. No extra staff needed. No additional server. (For those who don’t yet have an EHR, there is a manual entry option.) It also is secure and HIPAA-compliant. The Registry lets you focus on what’s important—your patients.

Knowledge is power.

PTs are passionate about helping their patients achieve the best functional outcomes and quality of life—help them do it better! The Registry Dashboard allows individual PTs to monitor their patients’ outcomes and see where they are doing well and where they can improve. Practices and health systems can dig into their data to identify issues with documentation and to contribute to internal quality improvement projects.

Because you already HAVE the data.

You collect patient outcomes data every day—but do you make use of it to optimize patient outcomes? In health care, we’re at a crossroads between just generating a lot of information and figuring out what that information means, how to apply what we learn, and how to put it all to use to drive quality, innovation, and value. With the Registry, you can view your performance on key clinical metrics on demand, benchmark yourself against national averages, and prepare for future shifts in reimbursement and care coordination.

Because MIPS.

No one loves extra regulatory requirements. But APTA anticipates that PTs will have to participate in the Merit-Based Incentive Payment System (MIPS), and the Physical Therapy Outcomes Registry is already approved by CMS to submit quality data. So, if you already participate in MIPS voluntarily (which, by the way, APTA encourages) we can do that, too.

Michelle Vanderhoff is manager, editorial services, at the American Physical Therapy Association. She also is an evangelist for the PT Outcomes Registry (www.ptoutcomes.com) and all things related to evidence-based practice.

8 Reasons You Should Join the Physical Therapy Outcomes Registry

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