What is a registry? Patient registries help practices identify populations of patients, e.g., all patients with diabetes or hypertension, all men over age 50, or all women who need to have a mammogram.

Three Quest Teams—Preventive Care, Reducing Secondary Cardiovascular Risk, and ICSI Guideline Implementation—worked diligently in 2008 and all arrived at a similar conclusion: That physician practices in our region need registries in order to provide optimal preventive care and to help patients lower the risk of heart attacks and stroke.

Medical practices that do the best job of helping patients stay healthy use registries to identify missed services or treatment goals. They measure their success and make changes to provide better patient care. Electronic health records help, but are not essential to implementing a registry.

As physician practices utilize the patient registry, they can determine how successful they are at providing their patients with optimal preventive care services and making them healthier people. Doctors will be able to identify and contact patients whose latest exam or diagnostic test is past the recommended guideline time.

Patient Registry Team

Team Lead: Jean Kestner, Methodist Medical Center of Illinois
Black Belt: Cheryl Toland, Quality Quest for Health of Illinois

Team Members: Seema Alikhan, Quality Quest; Jim Dobbins, Decatur Memorial; John Houser, MD, OSF; Michael Jongerius, MD, Independent Practitioner; Richard Luetkemeyer, MD, Cat; Nancy Moersch, Illinois Quality Improvement Organization; Terry Murray, Quello Clinic, MN; Jan Simkins, Pekin Hospital; Bev Steele, Proctor Hospital; Bruce Steffens, MD, United Healthcare; Beth Thomas, RN, Pekin Hospital; Anita Timmons, Internal Medicine Group of Peoria; David Trachtenbarg, MD, MMCI