Quintiles and the American Physical Therapy Association (APTA) have formed a new strategic collaboration to develop and implement the Physical Therapy Outcomes Registry, intended to be the largest and most comprehensive physical therapy electronic repository to date.

“Patient registries are an increasingly vital component of real-world, comprehensive evidence development for identifying the causes of disease and, in this case, injuries and designing effective treatments,” said Cynthia Verst, president of Real-World and Late Phase Research at Quintiles. “Our goal is to build a new registry that will provide clinicians and practices with benchmark data to improve healthcare delivery and achieve better patient outcomes.”

APTA selected Quintiles for this initiative based on Quintiles’ extensive experience in post-marketing research, multi-stakeholder strategy and systems-oriented registry design and development. Recruitment of users for a pilot version of the registry will begin in the third quarter of 2014, with a full launch envisaged for early 2015.

“APTA is in a unique position to help physical therapists comply with requirements by payers, employers, certification boards, healthcare facilities and other entities to ensure participation, accreditation and adherence,” said Paul A. Rockar Jr., PT, DPT, MS, APTA.

Both Quintiles and APTA believe the Physical Therapy Outcomes Registry will be unlike any other existing physical therapy registry by providing data across the continuum of care. The registry will align with current and future quality and compliance programs required by payers, such as the Physician Quality Reporting System.

The Physical Therapy Outcomes Registry will use a hub-and-spoke model to collect data, wherein data is collected from multiple sources (the spokes) and deposited into a centralized repository (the hub). The spokes include electronic health record systems, billing and documentation systems used by health systems, APTA chapters (or components) across the country, private practices, other facility-based practices and individual physical therapists. This model will allow the largest amount of information to be collected in the most efficient manner and provide the ability to aggregate data across diverse patient populations and clinical settings in which physical therapists practice.

“Through strategic partnerships with current data collection tools and systems in the field, the Physical Therapy Outcomes Registry will become the most comprehensive database for demonstrating the value of physical therapy in the near future and will further the development of standards of practice and quality reporting requirements,” said Rockar.