ST. LOUIS—The American Optometric Association has announced the name that it has selected for its optometric registry—MORE (Measures and Outcomes Registry for Eyecare). Created to aggregate patient data from participating optometry practices, the registry is intended to be a collective database of clinical information to provide more quality measurement solutions, benchmark performance among peers, satisfy Meaningful Use Stage 2 criteria, and more.

"Imagine every optometrist in the country being able to collaborate on outcomes for glaucoma management, amblyopia treatment, contact lens-induced ulcers, myopia progression and more using evidence-based outcomes to improve our patient's care instead of waiting years for clinical trials," said Jeff Michaels, OD, chair of the AOA’s Quality Improvement and Registries Committee, which is overseeing the development of AOA’s MORE.

According to the AOA’s announcement on Monday, AOA’s MORE is a secure and easy-to-use data portal that will report to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) for increased reimbursements. It will help doctors with clinical improvement solutions and collect data (outcomes and population information).

It will be optometry’s collective database of clinical information to support increased access for patients and eventually support scope of care. Only non-identifying information, such as diagnosis or visual acuity, will be shown to AOA. The AOA will only see collective data and will not be able to see or obtain any information about specific doctors or patients.

AOA’s MORE is currently in trial testing in select practices nationwide in anticipation of a planned launch at Optometry’s Meeting in Seattle, Wash., June 24 to 28. Developers are currently finalizing EHR vendor agreements. Integration will begin with RevolutionEHR, Compulink and MaximEyes, Michaels told VMail, with additional companies following.

Powered by Prometheus Research, the registry is an AOA member benefit that will also be available to non-members for a fee.

Registries are becoming part of the new health care landscape. Learn more from Vision Monday’s “What You Don’t Know About Patient Data Could Hurt You or Your Patients,” and for more on this and other registries for optometrists and ophthalmologists, see “Professional Registries: Drilling Into Patient Information to Mine Big Data.”