Quality improvement

VIRTEX: SIR Data Registry

With your participation, VIRTEX will become the gold standard for clinical interventional radiology data to drive quality patient care and effectiveness.

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How does the SIR VIRTEX data registry work?

Watch this demo video to see how the VIRTEX SIR Data Registry can help improve patient care, track patient outcomes, and provide benchmarking capabilities for interventional radiology.

With the arrival of VIRTEX, interventional radiology is ready to take a major step forward in advancing patient care and enhancing recognition of the specialty’s capabilities. This will be the gold standard for clinical IR data to drive improvements in quality, practice performance, and innovations for years to come.

VIRTEX enables your practice and/or institution to:

  • Prove that IR therapies can be first-line solutions that are less invasive and more efficient than surgical approaches
  • Strengthen data-driven, evidence-based care that reduces variation in treatment
  • Inform and benefit from the development and implementation of clinical practice guidelines
  • Obtain standard sets of data types to benchmark and improve care outcomes

How to enroll

SIR is currently recruiting practices and institutions that have a strong commitment to quality improvement to serve as pilot sites. 

Enroll

The SIR data registry is the way to grow IR and make sure interventional radiologists succeed.

Rajesh Shah, MD, FSIR

Director of Interventional Radiology, Associate Chief of Radiology, VA Palo Alto Health Care System

Rajesh Shah, MD, FSIR

Frequently asked questions

Benefits of participating
  • Improve the quality and safety of the care we provide
    To date, the IR specialty lacks a robust clinical data registry that demonstrates the value of IR procedures. VIRTEX aims to show that IR therapies can be first-line solutions that are often less invasive and more efficient than traditional approaches while delivering equivalent or better outcomes.
  • Compare & evaluate the effectiveness of different treatments & approaches
    VIRTEX can provide benchmarking, identify variations in practice, determine clinical practice patterns, and provide performance feedback.
  • VIRTEX can drive quality payment initiatives, reimbursement, and coverage
    The future of reimbursement and coverage is having evidence-based real-world data.  CMS is moving from a volume-based payment model to a value-based payment model, where you will need to demonstrate the quality of care provided and incorporate the patient voice.
  • Support research
    As VIRTEX grows, it will provide large datasets for research and publication purposes as well as support public health efforts. National benchmarking will allow hospitals and practices to compare data.
  • Monitor safety and effectiveness of equipment and devices
    Interventional radiology is a specialty that uses many different types of devices. VIRTEX aims to collect device data to monitor the safety and effectiveness of coils, filters, stents, catheters, and more.
Data collection
  • Several systems are compatible with VIRTEX
    VIRTEX will easily integrate with widely used systems and trusted resources commonly found in sites everywhere. These include: 
    • HI-IQ
    • Nuance PowerScribe®
    • Electronic health records 
  • Standardized reports result in quality data
    SIR advocates the adoption of practice paradigms that improve patient outcomes. Standardized reporting provides many benefits including a structured method to capture clinic data that can be customized to your clinic workflow. Registry users will need to update to version 3.1 with updated templates to participate in VIRTEX.
  • Benefits of using standardized reports
    • Reimbursement: increased charge capture, less report revisions and errors, and less denials
    • Increased dictation speed and efficiency
    • Referring physician satisfaction increase
    • Allows for registry participation
  • IT implementation
    VIRTEX requires no additional hardware or servers to purchase or install. We will work closely with your IT department for implementation, system connection, and access.
  • Accessing your institution’s data
    Using the registry will require minimal technical knowledge. All you will need is an internet connection and a web browser. Furthermore, data intake from your site to the registry is completely automated. Only your facility and those staff that you give access can see your site's data. Data used for benchmarking is aggregated and de-identified.
  • Data submission and workflow
    You can set the parameters and scheduling for your data uploads to your convenience so there will be little to no impact on administrative processes or practice workflow.  
About standardized reports
Protected Health Information (PHI)
  • Why PHI data is collected
    VIRTEX is using two forms of data integration: EHR patient data and IR data from a procedure report. PHI is required to link the two data sources together. Without PHI data, we would not be able to link collected data such as complications or specific patient outcomes to a patient’s medical history. Registries have found that PHI is necessary to develop actionable quality metrics.
  • Benchmarking
    Risk-adjustment models use patient information such as DOB/age, gender, and race to allow fair comparisons and benchmarking across sites. Standardized data collection across centers will allow for benchmarking and improvement of long-term outcomes.
  • Quality measure reporting
    The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) requires PHI for data submission of quality measures.
  • Data security
    Nothing is more important to us than the security and integrity of the data residing within the registry. Accordingly, the platform uses the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) to protect hosted data as well as encryption protocols, such as HTTPS and SFTP, to transfer data between users and the registry.
  • Patient-Reported outcomes (PRO) module
    PHI is needed to evaluate long-term and patient-reported outcomes. Patient-reported outcomes give a longitudinal view into important outcomes such as survival, reinterventions and hospitalizations, burden of disease, and quality of life. Registries have found that PHI is necessary to develop actionable quality metrics.
Cost to participate
  • Implementation fee
    VIRTEX has a one-time integration fee of $750 per site. The standardized reports used for registry data collection are available at no cost through SIR.
  • Annual fee
    VIRTEX has an annual subscription rate of $125 (additional fee for non-member participation). These assume a few basic requirements; however, you will see that the value your site realizes from the registry will be well worth the minimal participation cost.
  • Future fees
    There may be additional nominal fees as optional modules are added.
How to get started
  • Schedule a conversation
    VIRTEX is now available for implementation at your site. Email us at  virtex@sirweb.org  to schedule a conversation.
  • Designate a project lead
    This person will be the main point of contact between your site and SIR. SIR will work closely with the Project Lead to ensure that all steps of the process are successfully completed, from contracting through implementation and ongoing support.
  • Who to involve
    It is best to involve all key roles from the beginning (as applicable to your site): technology (radiology IT, PowerScribe® administrator, EHR IT), IR department and/or practice administrators, quality, legal, contracting.
  • Contracting
    VIRTEX registry agreements are provided to you from SIR. These include a Participation Agreement, Business Associate Agreement, and a Data Use Agreement.
  • Training and technical support
    While the VIRTEX user experience is designed to be intuitive and user friendly, a variety of training and onboarding resources, such as video walkthroughs and user guides, will be available to familiarize you with the registry’s features and capabilities. 

News about VIRTEX