The American College of Surgeons Surgeon Specific Registry (ACS SSR™) has a legacy of positively affecting patient care by serving the needs of individual surgeons in tracking their cases, measuring outcomes, and complying with the changing regulatory requirements. Over the course of more than a decade, the SSR has developed from the original Case Log system into a comprehensive online quality improvement tool, which is convenient and easy to use from any computer or mobile device (iOS and Android). At this year’s Virtual Clinical Congress, attendees will have the opportunity to learn more about the ACS SSR when visiting ACS Central.
Better outcomes
Surgeons can follow their patients through the phases of surgical care by collecting their clinically relevant patient data—preoperatively, intraoperatively, and postoperatively—including outcomes variables. Using the analytics functionality, surgeons can learn from their data and determine successful outcomes or what they can do in the future to ensure success.
More than 2.6 million case records have been entered in the SSR system since its initial release on the new ACS Data Registry Platform in 2017. Many surgeons use delegate account access and the ability to upload many cases at once using Excel.
The SSR offers helpful educational resources in its library’s SSR Education Center to optimize the use of the registry with step-by-step guides and videos.
Meet regulatory mandates
The SSR further aids individual surgeons in meeting regulatory requirements. Surgeons can fulfill the Practice Improvement requirement of the American Board of Surgery (ABS) Continuous Certification Program, which requires ongoing participation in a local, regional, or national outcomes registry or quality assessment program. In addition, the ABS requires that surgeons submit a 12-month operative log at least every 10 years, which can also be accomplished using electronic transfer from the SSR.
If eligible, surgeons may sign up for the SSR Qualified Registry, offering participation in the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) pathway of the Quality Payment Program for the performance year 2020. CMS has approved the SSR as a Qualified Registry to provide MIPS 2020 participation through registry-based individual reporting and supports the Quality and Improvement Activities (IA) component.
The 2020 Qualified Registry–Clinical Quality Measures option comprises 15 MIPS Clinical Quality Measures (CQMs) from which to choose and provides options to general and plastic surgeons. Of those 15 measures, four are outcome measures and 10 are high-priority measures. For the IA component, surgeons can choose from 74 surgically relevant IAs for attestation.
If you plan to participate in CMS MIPS for the 2020 performance year using the ACS SSR, make sure to verify your eligibility for MIPS 2020 participation. Surgeons can receive positive, neutral, or negative payment adjustments based on their final MIPS score. The SSR MIPS 2020 Education Program now offers surgeons the possibility to obtain Continuing Medical Education (CME) credit. It includes several instructional video tutorials about the program and system as well as registration for a Q&A session. Visit the ACS SSR website for more information.
If you are new to the SSR, opening your SSR user account is easy. All you need is your eight-digit ACS member number to sign up online. While the SSR is free of charge for ACS members, surgeons who are not members of the College pay an annual subscription fee. Submit an online application to become an ACS member today.
The ACS SSR will continuously improve the functionality of the SSR system, as well as address enhancement opportunities while communicating programmatic updates and providing education and training on how to use the system. For more information, contact the SSR program representatives at [email protected] or at 312-202-5408.