It is becoming increasingly important to ‘benchmark’ your results against your peers. Patients, private health insurers and regulatory authorities are becoming increasingly interested to ensure doctors’ results are acceptable.
Many areas of medicine already have clinical registries. Doctors performing venous treatments for varicose veins, venous leg ulcers, pelvic congestion syndrome and so on currently have no registry to benchmark against.
The College of Phlebology has set up an International Venous Registry with two inputs. The first is from the doctor and the second is patient-reported outcome measures (PROMS) reported by the patient. The patient reports continue annually to build up a picture of medium- and long-term results. This is unlike many international registries that only follow patients up in the short term or only have input from doctors.
Doctors are able to download their own data and so are able to show insurers or regulatory bodies that their results are benchmarked against their peers.
Membership of the College of Phlebology Venous Registry gives patients confidence that a doctor is happy for the results to be compared with their peers.
Finally, as with all registries, any device or technique that produces poor results will be highlighted enabling doctors and patients to know that there is a problem with a certain device or technique.
Any doctor who is performing venous surgery and not performing regular audits of their own practice should consider joining the College of Phlebology Venous Registry.
Membership of the College of Phlebology gives free use of the CoP Venous Registry while the doctor remains a member.
Link: https://www.collegeofphlebology.com/college-of-phlebology-venous-registry/