Approximately 30 percent of anesthesia practices in the United States contribute data to the National Anesthesia Clinical Outcomes Registry (NACOR), maintained by the Anesthesia Quality Institute (AQI). What do they get out of this?
First, participants in NACOR get the satisfaction of understanding their work. As physician anesthesiologists, we have an obligation to our patients. This includes striving to learn the newest techniques, use the safest equipment and achieve the best outcomes. But without a way to measure ourselves, we are only guessing at the results. Quality improvement data is the measuring stick we can use to demonstrate progress, whether as individuals, groups or a profession.
Practices sending data to NACOR have continuous online access to dozens of demographic and outcome reports, trended over time. The primary purpose of NACOR is to foster local quality improvement, and the most important comparison for any group or any individual anesthesiologist is “am...