Americas Hernia Society Quality Collaborative Foundation

Programs: (1) the organization collected and shared data on an additional 6,917 hernia cases in 2016, bringing the total cases to 13,715 by the end of 2016; the organization made its ahsqc data available, as follows: (a) to the 193 surgeons who are participating members of the ahsqc practicing at over 227 hospitals, academic centers and other surgery centers for their quality improvement, research and publication use (at no charge); (b) to its members through four educational sessions at which significant trends and outcomes analyses were shared and discussed to learn and improve methods to improve the quality of hernia care; (c) to the members of the americas hernia society and the american college of surgeons at those societies' medical and scientific educational conferences, including public presentations of data for improvement of hernia patient outcomes in six surgical techniques or processes; (d) to the u. S. Food and drug administration for its regulatory and research uses (without any charge); (e) to the fda and other participants in the fda's mdepinet public-private partnership to support the fda's mission to improve safety and efficacy of medical devices (the organization shared data with respect to devices used in hernia surgery) (without any charge); (f) to support the publication of ahsqc's data for quality improvement in six peer reviewed publications (without any charge); and (g) to six medical device providers for their use in understanding and improving the effects of their devices on the quality of patient care as seen through outcomes data and analysis (a fee was charged). (2)developed a new data collection module which expanded the collaborative's services to collect and share data on inguinal hernias (previously, only data on ventral hernias was collected and shared); this new, inguinal module was beta tested in 2016 and launched in january, 2017. (3) in 2016, a research grant program was started to support graduate medical student (residents and fellows) research related to hernia disease utilizing the ahsqc database; two grants, totaling $25,000, were awarded in 2016.