Overview/Brief Summary

Each year, more than 700,000 adults in the Unites States have knee or hip replacement surgery to eliminate what can often be debilitating pain, and regain joint function and mobility lost to advanced arthritis. With that number expected to grow significantly in the next 20 years, both for older adults and patients under age 65, accurately assessing the surgery’s real, everyday quality-of-life improvements for patients becomes critically important.

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) has awarded us a grant to establish a nation- wide Total Joint Replacement registry. Our goals are to:

Establish a national registry of over 33,000 diverse patients of 130 orthopedic surgeons representing all regions of the US and varied hospital and surgeon practice settings (e.g., urban/rural, low and high volume)

Provide optimal guidance for patients, clinicians, and national healthcare policymakers
Develop new and transformative comparative effectiveness tools and conduct research useful to both clinical practice and healthcare policy

Establish resources to insure sustainability beyond the four years of this proposal, etc.