Rheumatology Informatics System for Effectiveness Registry Participation Associated With Significant Gains in Quality...

To examine the association between participation in a qualified clinical data registry and quality measure performance.

We included practices that joined the American College of Rheumatology's Rheumatology Informatics System for Effectiveness (RISE) registry between 2015 and 2021. We calculated annual performance on four primary measures and two control measures starting 12 months before through 18 months after enrollment. We used an interrupted time series (ITS) analysis to assess changes in practice-level performance before and after RISE enrollment overall and stratified by practices' baseline performance.

We included 85 practices caring for 331,975 patients. Overall, performance on all primary measures improved during the study period, although RISE enrollment was associated with a significantly greater improvement rate in one of the four primary measures (rheumatoid arthritis [RA] functional status assessment [slope difference 0.88 percentage points/month; P = 0.006]). Practices with lower baseline performance had significantly greater improvements after joining RISE for three of the four primary measures compared with high-performing practices, including RA functional status assessment, tuberculosis screening before biologic therapy, and osteoporosis screening.

RISE enrollment was associated with significant improvements in three of four rheumatology-specific quality measures for practices with lower baseline performance. These findings suggest that registry participation may accelerate uptake of best practices and narrow performance gaps across sites. Future work is needed to understand the mechanisms underlying these improvements.