Registry Services

A clinical data registry is a database of information related to patients’ health, medical care, and billing records designed to improve healthcare quality, patient safety, operational efficiency, and research.

Physicians rely on ACEP’s Clinical Emergency Data Registry (CEDR) to comply with regulatory requirements to report patient quality data to The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Quality Payment Program (QPP), and the Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) — a mandatory program for eligible clinicians providing services to Medicare patients.

By developing data registries, ACEP ensures that emergency physicians are well positioned to compete in an ever increasing complex and competitive health care industry. These data help to define emergency medicine practice, quality, operational efficiency, and care guidelines through analytics, research, and artificial intelligence (AI) methods.

Without ACEP’s investment in data registries, emergency physicians would be relegated to external, often biased data, used by others to mischaracterize the practice of emergency medicine.

As the leading advocate for emergency physicians, ACEP developed the Clinical Emergency Data Registry (CEDR) for emergency clinicians, which has been certified and accredited as a Qualified Clinical Data Registry (QCDR) by CMS. Since its launch in 2015, CEDR has evolved into a robust, "big data" platform that helps to power the EM Data Institute.

Nearly 20,000 emergency clinicians already participate in the EM Data Institute through CEDR in order to comply with CMS’ MIPS reporting requirements. Many more participate through E-QUAL (see FAQ #6), and a variety of research and grant opportunities.

When you participate in CEDR, your expertise and experience help to improve patient outcomes across the country. You also have the opportunity to benchmark your performance alongside other registry participants and CMS-released national benchmarks.

Learn more about CEDR and how to participate.

 In light of CEDR’s success, ACEP is helping other medical specialties by developing registries specific to those practices. HOMR leverages CEDR to provide Data Registry services for Hospital Medicine within the MIPS Quality Payment Program (QPP).

 HOMR allows hospitalists to take advantage of seven newly added quality measures, in addition to the five public measures provided by CMS, facilitating better scoring in the Quality Payment Program.

ACEP developed HOMR in response to the growing trend of EM groups offering multi-specialty professional services to their hospital partners. HOMR is seamlessly integrated into the existing EM Data Institute platform. ACEP is actively pursuing other registries to better support our members.

The Emergency Quality Network (E-QUAL) is a free, virtual learning community created for and by emergency physicians. E-QUAL engages physicians from participating EDs in a low-burden, learning collaborative to help improve clinical outcomes, streamline coordination of care, and reduce costs.

E-QUAL collaboratives have resulted in more efficiency, safety, and value—from saving lives through better sepsis care to minimizing harm caused by ionizing radiation to saving dollars through avoidable imaging studies and hospitalizations. Each year emergency physicians have an opportunity to participate in E-QUAL learning collaborative focused on a single clinical topic.

There is an enormous need to objectively evaluate economic value, utilization patterns, uncompensated care, substantial cost variations, and inconsistencies in reimbursement between payers in the same region. Other critical challenges include declining Medicare reimbursement, and a shift from fee-for-service to value-based care within MIPS.

ACEP is developing an Economic Registry to address these challenges. The Economic Registry will provide feedback on a range of performance and outcome quality measures, reduce discrepancies in reimbursement, and provide a more stable environment where clinicians can focus on patient safety and effective clinical care.

Emergency department leaders can better predict reimbursement; patients will be able to better hold insurance accountable; and policymakers will make better health care policy based on real emergency medicine data.

Data alone does not solve clinical challenges, especially in emergency care. But “data analytics” — the collection, transformation, and interpretation of large sets of data by industry experts — delivers meaningful insights into diagnostic trends, predictive modeling, patient and physician outcomes in order to drive more informed decision-making.

Analytics from the EM Data Institute are already yielding critical insights into emergency medicine research, policy, and education. As our datasets grow, ACEP aims to incorporate machine learning, natural language processing, and other artificial intelligence methods to improve delivery of emergency medicine.

ACEP’s Data Analytics program furthers our mission to enhance the quality of care for patients and families.

According to the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services,

Health information technology (HIT) involves the processing, storage, and exchange of health information in an electronic environment. Widespread use of HIT within the healthcare industry will improve the quality of health care, prevent medical errors, reduce health care costs, increase administrative efficiencies, decrease paperwork, and expand access to affordable health care. It is imperative that the privacy and security of electronic health information be ensured as this information is maintained and transmitted electronically.

ACEP agrees with these aspirational sentiments. While much has been achieved, significant advancements are necessary to realize the full benefits of HIT. To that end, in 2019, ACEP established the Health Innovation Technology Committee that is dedicated to the use of informatics to advance emergency care. 

Read more about HIT and view ACEP’s HIT policy statement.