Purpose:
CRSTI’s Quality and Outcomes Management Program facilitates the collection, validation and reporting of clinical outcomes for practicing cardiac surgeons and cardiologists. The program evaluates treatment results and provides internal continuous quality improvement (CQI) and benchmarks for data. CRSTI provides an Outcomes Research program to study risk assessment, practice patterns and compliance with national standards. CRSTI’s Quality and Outcomes Division will implement the technology and information systems that support clinical research and quality management programs to improve participation, data quality and clinical application of analyzed results.

Cardiac Surgery:
CRSTI currently represents the following surgeons in their pursuit of collecting Quality and Outcomes data for the practice of adult cardio-thoracic surgery.

Tea E. Acuff, MD William Brinkman, MD Tung Cai, MD David J. Carter, MD Todd M. Dewey, MD James R. Edgerton, MD David A. Fosdick, MD George W. Johnson, Jr., MD

H. Michael Lewis, MD Michael J. Mack, MD Mitchell J. Magee, MD Gregory Messner, MD David O. Moore, MD Melvin R. Platt, MD William Ryan, MD William Wallace, MD

Data has been collected for the past twenty years and we have amassed over 42,000 patient records. This clinical data is encrypted and submitted biannually to the Society of Thoracic Surgeons (STS) for harvest to the national database. The data is then benchmarked for national, regional, and local comparisons. CRSTI also works in conjunction with many hospitals' quality management programs to provide data and clinical expertise to assess/analyze patient care outcomes for CV surgery.

The goal of CRSTI's Quality and Outcomes department is to continuously improve patient care for those undergoing open heart procedures.