Christiana Care joins national cardiac rehabilitation registry

Christiana Care joins national cardiac rehabilitation registry

Ian  T. Deptula, MBA, from the exercise staff in Cardiac Rehab at Christiana Care, works with a patient.
Ian T. Deptula, MBA, from the exercise staff in Cardiac Rehab at Christiana Care, works with a patient.

Christiana Care Health System’s Center for Heart & Vascular Health has joined the American Association of Cardiovascular and Pulmonary Rehabilitation (AACVPR) Outpatient Cardiac Rehabilitation Registry.

The United States’ first nationwide registry of its kind, the AACVPR Outpatient Cardiac Rehabilitation Registry tracks patient outcomes and program performance in meeting evidence-based guidelines for secondary prevention of heart and vascular disease. It provides cardiac rehabilitation programs with national outcomes data for benchmarking and demonstrates the positive impact of cardiac rehabilitation on the morbidity, mortality, physical function and quality of life of cardiac patients.

Christiana Care’s Cardiac Rehabilitation Department is the only program in Delaware participating in the registry. Last year, Christiana Care monitored more than 17,000 cardiac rehabilitation visits.

“Our involvement in the AACVPR Outpatient Cardiac Rehabilitation Registry will provide an efficient means for our program to track, document, communicate and continue to improve our patient outcomes and program performance in the secondary prevention of heart and vascular disease,” said Anthony B. Furey, D.O., FACC, medical director of Christiana Care’s Cardiac Rehabilitation Program.

Officially launched in June 2012, the registry has been under development since 2007, and underwent three months of beta testing by a select number of cardiac rehabilitation programs.

The registry is HIPAA compliant and all data is securely encrypted using industry-standard procedures. Safeguards to protect the security of data include a combination of physical, technological and administrative security measures. Registry subscribers have access only to their program’s patient information and to aggregated data from the registry as a whole; subscribers are not able to access or view other programs’ data.

The AACVPR is a professional society of more than 2,500 members dedicated to the advancement of cardiovascular and pulmonary rehabilitation services for patients with heart, vascular and lung disease and to the support of professionals working in these programs.

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