American Society of Anesthesiologists Announces First-of-Its-Kind Medical Specialty Society Collaboration with Epic to Create Anesthesia Community Registry

CHICAGO – The American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) and its related organization, the Anesthesia Quality Institute (AQI), today announced a groundbreaking collaboration with Epic to transform how anesthesia data are collected and used to improve patient care. Powered by Epic’s new Community Registries platform, the Anesthesia Community Registry (ACR) will become a cornerstone of AQI’s efforts to help anesthesiologists nationwide advance quality, safety, and patient outcomes. ASA will be the first to implement the platform — positioning ASA as leaders in data-driven quality improvement and insight generation.

Medical specialty registries are clinical databases that collect and organize health care information focused on advancing patient care and outcomes across a specialty. Established in 2008, AQI created the National Anesthesia Clinical Outcomes Registry (NACOR) to elevate clinical anesthesia care by focusing on patient outcomes and quality improvement. The ACR and NACOR will work in tandem to allow a more robust collection and reporting system with greater ease of use.

“Our work with Epic will allow anesthesiologists, anesthesia practices, hospitals, and other health care institutions the ability to better measure what anesthesia care is being given, how that care is being delivered, and how it can be improved,” said AQI Board of Directors Chair Randall M. Clark, M.D., FASA, and former professor of anesthesiology, University of Colorado School of Medicine in Aurora. “With the new technology provided by the Epic Community Registries platform, anesthesiologists around the country can communicate outcomes along with millions of data points from surgeries each year.”

“As the first specialty to champion patient safety in the 1980s, anesthesiology is safer than ever before,” said ASA President Donald E. Arnold, M.D., FACHE, FASA, chair, Department of Anesthesiology, Mercy Hospital St. Louis and physician lead for the Mercy Anesthesiology Specialty Council. “As clinicians and scientists, we are always striving for improvement. With our groundbreaking collaboration with Epic, we will be able to investigate more granular clinical anesthesia data, expand research, provide more robust benchmarking and better support department level performance improvement in the care we provide to our patients.”

“This is a big step forward in how specialty societies help their communities learn and improve together,” said Seth Howard, EVP R&D at Epic. “With Epic’s Community Registries platform, ASA will discover insights to drive better quality and outcomes. We're excited to support registries like ACR in advancing patient care.”

Epic’s cloud-based Community Registries platform is ready to implement, and creation of the ACR is underway. Meanwhile, AQI is working to build substantial enhancements to NACOR that will offer AQI participants the ability to easily access, visualize, and use ACR data. NACOR will continue to serve as an ASA member benefit, offering reporting, benchmarking, quality improvement, and research opportunities using the national, aggregated and deidentified dataset that complies with the highest standards of security.

THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF ANESTHESIOLOGISTS
Founded in 1905, the American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) is an educational, research and scientific society with more than 59,000 members organized to advance the medical practice of anesthesiology and secure its future. ASA is committed to ensuring anesthesiologists evaluate and supervise the medical care of all patients before, during, and after surgery. ASA members also lead the care of critically ill patients in intensive care units, as well as treat pain in both acute and chronic settings.

To learn more about the ACR or NACOR, visit asahq.org/ACR or contact the AQI at [email protected]. For more information on the field of anesthesiology, visit the American Society of Anesthesiologists online at asahq.org. To learn more about how anesthesiologists help ensure patient safety, visit asahq.org/madeforthismoment. Follow ASA on Facebook, X, Instagram, Bluesky, and LinkedIn.

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