ACEP Data Summit Recap: CEDR Data for Research

This July, ACEP convened its second “Data Summit” at its headquarters in Irving, Texas. The group was made up of ACEP leaders and staff, key members of the Clinical Emergency Data Registry (CEDR) committee, and interested participants in the CEDR quality registry. I’ve been leading a section grant team to look at the data variability in our specialty’s registry, so I was excited to meet and learn more about how the EDs are contributing data, and how that data is pooled and analyzed.

Being a Qualified Clinical Data Registry, CEDR’s main purpose is to report to CMS on EM-related quality measures. These were codified in 2014 for Physician Quality Reporting System (PQRS) reporting and have taken on additional significance after the MACRA law was passed. CEDR currently collects hundreds of data elements from EDs, to calculate dozens of quality measures - such as appropriateness of head CT usage in mild TBI, pregnancy testing in women with abdominal pain, and timely ED throughput.

But there has been an interest, expressed at the first Data Summit earlier this year, to expand CEDR into something more than just a vehicle for reporting to CMS. The data in CEDR could be used for research for various audiences, including industry and academia.

This expansion in scope, however, would require a significant restructuring of the data – and a new data governance. ACEP’s Bill Malcom provided a deep dive into how CEDR data is currently structured, and what might be necessary to transform it into a research resource. Researchers in attendance discussed what data elements would be a priority for them, and what quality assurances they would like to see in this new repository. Several proposals for moving forward were discussed, with plans to report back to the group on feasibility and costs associated with each method.

My take-home message for this Data Summit was that ACEP is committed to leveraging CEDR into a new research resource. The work will be substantial, but opportunities for informaticists abound. If you’re interested in learning more, or want to attend the next data summit, please reach out! You can email me or reach out through the Informatics Section’s EngagED forum.

Nicholas Genes, MD, PhD, FACEP
Chair, Section for EM Informatics
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY