Quintiles and the American Physical Therapy Association (APTA) have announced a new strategic collaboration to develop and implement the Physical Therapy Outcomes Registry, which will be a comprehensive physical therapy electronic repository. According to an APTA news release, APTA selected Quintiles for this initiative based on the company’s experience in multi-stakeholder strategy, post-marketing research, and systems-oriented registry design and development.
Recruitment of users for a pilot version of the registry will begin in the third quarter of 2014, with a full launch envisioned for early 2015. The registry will align with current and future quality and compliance programs required by payers, such as the Physician Quality Reporting System. Both groups believe the registry will be unique as it will provide data across the continuum of care, according to APTA.
The Physical Therapy Outcomes Registry will use a hub-and-spoke model to collect data, wherein data is collected from multiple sources (the “spokes”) and deposited into a centralized repository (the “hub”). The APTA news release indicates that this model will allow the largest amount of information to be collected in the most efficient manner and provide the ability to aggregate data across diverse patient populations and clinical settings in which physical therapists practice.
Cynthia Verst, president of Real-World & Late Phase Research at Quintiles, states, “Patient registries are an increasingly vital component of real-world, comprehensive evidence development for identifying the causes of disease and, in this case, injuries, and designing effective treatments.”
Verst adds, “Working together with APTA and leveraging our expertise in designing and implementing registries, our goal is to build a new registry that will provide clinicians and practices with benchmark data to improve healthcare delivery and achieve better patient outcomes.”
Source: APTA
