Vascular study group grows to include Georgia medical centers

The Florida Vascular Study Group has joined with medical centers in Georgia to become the Florida-Georgia Vascular Study Group, a regional group under the auspices of the Society for Vascular Surgery’s Vascular Quality Initiative (SVS VQI). The national group fosters regional collaboration among physicians and hospitals to collect and analyze clinical data from patients undergoing vascular procedures.

Led by Adam Beck, M.D., a UF assistant professor of surgery, the Florida-Georgia group’s focus is to improve the care of vascular patients throughout the region. The group’s second annual meeting will take place in October at Shands at UF.

More than 50 physicians from 10 medical centers across Florida and Georgia are members of the group, and more centers are in the process of joining. Together, the group has collected quality improvement data on more than 2,400 procedures, providing a tremendous resource for developing quality improvement initiatives across the region.

With oversight by the national society’s quality initiative and its associated Patient Safety Organization, regional groups collect procedural data and information about pre- and post-operative care. This allows benchmarking of outcome variables so physicians can identify best practices and areas for quality improvement. The current SVS VQI web-based data-entry system allows real-time benchmarking of outcomes after vascular procedures on a per-surgeon or per-center basis. Such data can inform discussions regarding quality improvement at a local level, such as with morbidity and mortality conferences.

The national Vascular Quality Initiative is expanding rapidly across the country. It now consists of eight regional groups, including more than 160 participating medical centers. The centers have accrued data on more than 50,000 procedures to date — nearly 2,500 every month. UF vascular surgeons are excited to be a part of this effort, and are proud to be leaders in improving surgical quality in the region.