AmSECT Announces Collaboration with

PERForm Registry

BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS — The American Society of ExtraCorporeal Technology (AmSECT) continues to break new ground in patient safety and quality measurement through a new collaboration with the PERFusion measures and outcomes (PERForm) Registry, a multi-institutional quality assurance and improvement registry. The partnership will combine AmSECT’s established position within the perfusion and cardiothoracic surgery community with the PERForm Registry’s expertise in database management and analytics to distribute benchmark reporting to perfusionists and cardiothoracic surgery team members around the world. This partnership will provide AmSECT members a common platform for assessing the quality and safety of cardiopulmonary bypass for their patients. Those participating in the PERForm registry will receive quarterly quality reports that benchmark their practice against other PERForm registry participants. In addition, PERForm will have access to AmSECT’s experts and thought leaders to enhance the scientific underpinnings of future investigative work.

“Currently, few opportunities exist for perfusionists to know how they are doing”, says Kenny Shann, AmSECT’s President. “Partnering with the PERForm registry is a long time coming. We are in an era of unprecedented attention concerning quality assessment and improvement. As a profession, it is clear we need an understanding of how our management of patients on cardiopulmonary bypass contributes to the overall quality of care for patients undergoing cardiac surgery. Our partnership with the PERForm registry will provide an unprecedented set of opportunities to assess and improve every center’s quality and enhance patient safety.”

"For the past 7 years, the PERForm registry has seen tremendous growth," said Donald S. Likosky, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Cardiac Surgery at the University of Michigan, and the PERForm Registry Director. "This collaboration with AmSECT will ensure that the PERForm Registry will be more visible within the larger perfusion community.  Our goal is to assist cardiac surgical teams around the world with opportunities for improving their center’s quality of care that could otherwise not have been possible."

About AmSECT

The American Society of ExtraCorporeal Technology was founded in 1964 with the belief that members of the then-new allied health field could best serve their profession by sharing their thoughts and experiences. Today AmSECT has over 2,000 members throughout the world and is dedicated to promoting the profession.

About the PERForm Registry

The PERForm registry, which has been designed to supplement and link to a center’s cardiac surgical databases, focuses on cardiopulmonary bypass equipment and practices in the setting of cardiac surgery. The registry has been developed at the University of Michigan and is structurally embedded in the Michigan Society of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery Quality Collaborative (MSTCVS-QC), a professional society based quality collaborative supported by Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan (BCBSM) and the Blue Care Network. PERForm currently has forty-four institutional participants including thirty-two of the thirty-three in Michigan and twelve others across the United States and contains more than 44,000 cardiac surgical procedures.

Contacts

Kenneth G. Shann, CCP
American Society of ExtraCorporeal Technology
shann@partners.org

Donald S. Likosky, Ph.D.
PERForm Registry
likosky@med.umich.edu