AAO launches IRIS Registry

San Francisco-The American Academy of Ophthalmology (AAO) has officially launched the Intelligent Research in Sight (IRIS) Registry, the United States’ first comprehensive eye disease and condition registry.

The centralized data repository and reporting tool aggregates patient data from electronic health records (EHRs) and performs statistical analysis that enables ophthalmologists to improve patient care, reduce the cost and enhance the speed of some large clinical trials, assist in monitoring resource utilization, comply with federal payment programs, and enhance quality and practice efficiency.

According to the AAO, physicians and eye surgeons who participate and share data using the registry will benefit from the growing body of knowledge it houses as they review their own performance against benchmarks.

There are already 2,300 physicians in 47 states who are participating in the registry, having signed up during a limited rollout, which began in 2013.

The ophthalmology registry currently holds more than 5 million patient records and is expected to ultimately house more than 20 million in 2 years.

“This is a watershed moment for the field of ophthalmology,” said David W. Parke II, MD, chief executive officer of the AAO. “We as physicians find ourselves able to harness the power of many millions of pieces of clinical information in order to make evidence-based decisions in a fraction of the time it would have taken 10 years ago.

“The IRIS Registry is truly a revolutionary tool that will help us improve care for patients and ensure the best possible outcomes,” Dr. Parke added.

The registry is now available for open enrollment to all U.S.-based academy members and their practices. Eligible physicians who sign up by June 1 and meet reporting requirements can use the IRIS Registry to report 2014 clinical quality data to the Physician Quality Reporting System (PQRS) and the Medicare EHR Incentive Program.

For EHR users, the registry will automatically extract and submit data for PQRS measures to the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services on a practice's behalf, eliminating the need to manually report on Medicare claims throughout the year.

“The power of aggregated data cannot be underestimated,” said William L. Rich III, MD, medical director of health policy for the AAO. “We’re going to see a rapid evolution in medical research as a result of the IRIS Registry."

To encourage wide-spread adoption of the registry, the academy is initially offering multiyear, fee-free access to member physicians who sign an agreement and integrate their EHR with the IRIS Registry in 2014. For more information, go to www.aao.org/irisregistry.