State-Based and National U.S. Registries: The Michigan Arthroplasty Registry Collaborative Quality Initiative...

The concept of a total joint registry as a tool to gather and compare longitudinal clinical outcome data emerged in the early 1970s; although initially begun as a single-institution effort, it soon spread to the development of large nationwide registries, first in Scandinavia and subsequently around the world. These national registries established the value of population-wide results, large cohorts, and the importance of ongoing implant surveillance efforts, as detailed elsewhere in this series. In the United States, concerted efforts to establish a national total joint registry for the hip and knee began in earnest in the early 2000s and culminated with the incorporation of the American Joint Replacement Registry (AJRR) in 2009. Parallel efforts soon followed to establish state-based total joint registries, either as stand-alone entities or in affiliation with the AJRR. Some of these state-based efforts succeeded, and some did not.In the first section of this article, Brian Hallstrom, MD, details the highly successful Michigan Arthroplasty Registry Collaborative Quality Initiative (MARCQI). This state-based effort was made possible by a unique partnership between a single dominant statewide private payer and the Michigan orthopaedic surgery community; it has already successfully advanced the quality of care for patients in Michigan, and efforts are ongoing.The second section, by James I. Huddelston, MD, details a different path to the establishment of a focused state-based registry. The California Joint Replacement Registry (CJRR) was the result of a partnership with representatives of the statewide business community and resulted in a pioneering effort to successfully collect and publicly report patient-reported outcome measures as part of the registry data set. Further discussed are the establishment, development, and status of the AJRR and its current place among the family of American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS) registries, which were inspired by the AJRR and span a range of orthopaedic specialties.