Bariatric Registry

CSii Managed Project: The Bariatric Registry

As a result of growing rates of obesity, bariatric the treatment of obesity surgery has become increasingly important in the battle against obesity in Ontario.

The Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care (MOHLTC) has recognized this trend, and has responded by drastically increasing treatment capacity by over 750% over the next few years. As a consequence to the drastic increase in both funding and capacity it was important for the Ministry to look for cost efficiencies and develop best practices to help guide core delivery.

To accomplish this, the MOHLTC has sponsored a province wide Bariatric Registry to track all patients referred for bariatric treatment in Ontario.

In the past, many bariatric patients have had to travel outside of Canada in order to obtain treatment, however, out of country care is very expensive and it makes essential follow up logistically difficult. As an alternative, the MOHLTC has created and increased funding to the Bariatric Centres of Excellence in Hamilton, Guelph, Toronto, and Ottawa and the Regional Assessment and Treatment Centres in Windsor, and soon in Thunder Bay. All of these Centres will be participating in the Bariatric Registry, and regular communication meetings have already served to foster dialogue about important issues and facilitate knowledge transfer between the associated groups.

The project will be implemented in two stages. First a Centralized Referral portal will be set up to standardize the information collected at referral, and collect it all via one centralized registry fax number. The referral forms will then be automatically entered into a database and matched to a bariatric centre based on geographic location by postal code. This will help eliminate costly duplication in the system, and alleviate wait times. Second, standardized data will be collected on the referred patients as they receive treatment at a participating centre to assist in developing evidencebased information regarding the risks and benefits of bariatric surgery.

The centralized registry will help to:

• Identify new risks, and develop strategies to address them
• Inform decision makers
• Ensure patients’ safety
• Identify practices and health services areas that require optimization
• Generate testable hypotheses for research studies on the etiology, management, efficiency, health economics and health services impact of severe obesity

In September 2009, CSii was chosen to implement this registry project in partnership with the Population Health Research Institute (PHRI). Led by Dr. Salim Yusuf, PHRI is an academic health science research institute driven by a passion to improve health outcomes for the global population by conducting large simple studies to address questions of international importance and relevance. Through this partnership between CSii and PHRI, an electronic Bariatric Registry will collect and store the necessary information in one consolidated database.