Report

The New Zealand National Cardiac Surgery Registry (NZCS) was been established by the NZ cardiac surgical community as a quality assurance tool that will enable them to audit their practice, review surgical outcomes and to compare these between units in New Zealand and also to benchmark against internationally reported standards.

The registry was established in September 2014 and the first 18-months have focused on both the integration of the data collection and analysis tools in clinical environments and ensuring accuracy of the data. This initial report is the early analysis of the year 2015 of patient enrolment in all 5 publicly-funded cardiac surgical units in New Zealand (Auckland, Waikato, Capital and Coast, Canterbury, Southern).

At an individual Surgeon and unit level NZCS facilitates analysis of work patterns and ensures that key performance indicators are met. It is used for regular multi-disciplinary discussion of individual patient morbidity and mortality as part of already well established peer review and audit processes. On a national level NZCS facilitates comparison of regional variation in surgical work load, patient characteristics, risk profiles, comparison of outcomes and will better inform national planning for current and future population and individual patient needs.