SVS Vascular Quality Initiative Expands to Include Venous Disease Treatment

January 11, 2013—The Society for Vascular Surgery (SVS) and the American Venous Forum (AVF) announced the expansion of the SVS Vascular Quality Initiative (VQI) to include the treatment of venous disease. The VQI, which SVS launched in 2011, will now include both arterial and venous procedures. Data collection and analysis tools for the VQI are provided through M2S, Inc.'s (West Lebanon, NH) Pathways cloud-based clinical data performance platform.

“This expansion of the VQI enhances SVS' mission to assist its members in understanding and improving patient outcomes by encouraging the collection, aggregation, and analysis of clinical data,” commented SVS President Peter Gloviczki, MD, in the press release. 

AVF President Robert McLafferty, MD, added, “As more than 20% of the adult population suffers from chronic venous diseases, AVF is committed to expanding its efforts through the VQI to assess the efficacy of various treatments for patients with venous disease.”

According to the societies, the partnership with M2S provides a platform for AVF and SVS members to analyze outcomes, determine best practices, and collaborate on quality improvement efforts across regions. Currently, the VQI has more than 200 participating centers across the United States and Canada. Regional quality groups have been established throughout the United States to share and analyze the data collected by individual sites and to initiate local quality improvement projects that affect patient care.

“M2S has a long history of managing healthcare information for the purpose of improving patient care,” said M2S's President and Chief Executive Officer, Greg Lange. “We are excited to partner with AVF and SVS to broaden our impact on healthcare quality improvement and clinical outcomes and to ensure the continued success of the VQI through our Pathways platform. We have designed Pathways to meet the critical challenges in healthcare and empower physicians to analyze individual procedure outcomes along with their peers.”