Knights Templar Eye Foundation, Inc IRIS Registry Pediatric Ophthalmology Research Fund
The Knights Templar Eye Foundation IRIS Registry Pediatric Ophthalmology Research Fund is another example of the vibrant collaboration with the American Academy of Ophthalmology to accomplish the following objectives: eliminate blindness, educate ophthalmologists, invest in the improvement of quality of eye care to the public, and to serve the youngest and most vulnerable populations.
The Academy launched the IRIS Registry (Intelligent Research in Sight) in March 2014 to promote improvement of care delivery and patient outcomes, and to provide individual physicians with feedback on their performance and comparison to national benchmarks. It is the nation’s first comprehensive eye disease clinical database and has grown to the world’s largest single largest clinical specialty database with over 50 million patients and 220 million patient encounters. The data is analyzed and used to provide ophthalmologists with information on their patients’ responses to treatments and outcomes, and adherence to best practices and changes in therapy. Analyses of the data have already led to scientific discoveries and 12 peer-reviewed publications. Members of the Academy say IRIS Registry is the most significant thing the Academy has ever accomplished in terms of its ability to be a major force to improve eye care.
Eligible physicians who sign up and meet the reporting requirements can use the IRIS Registry to report clinical quality data to the Merit-Based Incentive Payment System. The IRIS Registry will automatically extract and submit data for MIPS quality measures to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services on behalf of practices integrated with their EHR. Additionally, CMS has confirmed that the IRIS Registry is considered a Clinical Data Registry, and integration of your EHR system with the IRIS Registry will fulfill the Clinical Data Registry Reporting measure for the Public Health and Clinical Data Exchange Objective for the Promoting Interoperability Performance Category.
Unfortunately, a proportion of the 50 million patients and patient encounters in the IRIS Registry database are children, mainly because the incentives for participation through federal reimbursement programs are not as strong for pediatric ophthalmologists and for academic medical centers where many pediatric ophthalmologists work. The Knights Templar Eye Foundation IRIS Registry Pediatric Ophthalmology Research Fund will use the power of the IRIS Registry to perform analyses and research to address major causes of severe vision loss in children and to uncover new insights on prevention, disease prevalence, medication and surgery effectiveness, natural history of disease and treatment complications. Specifically, the program will focus on four major areas. First, pediatric ophthalmologists and more academic medical centers would be recruited to participate in the IRIS Registry. Second, the IRIS Registry would develop new quality measures for pediatric eye care so that pediatric ophthalmologists can review their performance and improve treatment safety and effectiveness over time. Third, the IRIS Registry would create learning plans, drawing from the KTEF Pediatric Ophthalmology Education Center resources, allowing pediatric ophthalmologists to provide better care. Fourth, the IRIS Registry will support grants for researchers to investigate pediatric eye diseases and uncover real-world evidence of prevention and treatment practices that lead to improved sight.
In summary, the Knights Templar Eye Foundation IRIS Registry Pediatric Ophthalmology Research Fund will provide pediatric ophthalmologists and patients with the tool of “Big Data” to identify patterns of disease and treatment that lead to better care of children’s vision in the United States.