Improving Patient Safety in Obstetric Anesthesia: An Introduction to the AQI AIRS Database

Initiatives in recent decades to improve quality in medicine have and will continue to significantly impact anesthesia practice. In order to assess and improve quality, metrics must be identified, tracked and reported. This was particularly problematic in anesthesia in that, until recently,there were no clearly identified anesthesia metrics. Faced with this reality, the specialty either had to define metrics or they would be defined for us by forces outside of anesthesiology. In response to this challenge, the Anesthesia Quality Institute (AQI) was created in 2008. To achieve its vision of quality improvement of the clinical practice of anesthesiology by improving quality care of patients, lowering anesthesia mortality and lowering anesthesia incidents, AQI created a database in 2010, the National Anesthesia Clinical Outcomes Registry (NACOR). NACOR is currently capturing data from an ever-increasing number of anesthesiology practices and currently reports on 26 Physician Quality Reporting System (PQRS) and 19 ASA Quality...