Please fill out the online PERForm Institutional Interest Form.  Once the online form is received by the PERForm Data Coordinating Center, you will receive an acknowledgement email and invitation to participate in a 30-minute web-based conference or phone call to address any questions your team might have.

Please fill out a Key Contacts Form.  Each organization must identify key personnel (full name, physical business address, business email address, and telephone number) required for participating in the PERForm Registry. These personnel include:

• Perfusion Service/Department Lead
• Perfusion PERForm Lead (could be the same as the Perfusion Service/Department Lead)
• Cardiothoracic Surgery Chief/Chair
• Organizational STS Adult Cardiac Surgery Database Manager
• Organizational Billing Contact
• Organizational Legal Counsel Contact

There are three regulatory documents that are required to enable each organization to participate in the PERForm Registry: (1) Participation Agreement; (2) HIPAA Business Associate Agreement; (3) Local Institutional Review Board. The U-M Office of General Counsel requires that all organizations use the University of Michigan’s Participation and Business Associate Agreement templates. These three documents must be completed prior to engaging our certified vendor partner (ARMUS by HealthCatalyst, “ARMUS”).

1. Complete a Participation Agreement: A Participation Agreement is required for all organizations and should be vetted by your organization’s legal or contract office. This language within this agreement cannot be edited in any material way by.
   
   
2. Complete a Business Associate Agreement (BAA): A BAA is required for all institutions and should be reviewed by your organization’s legal or contract office.  A BAA is required because of the HIPAA Privacy Rule requirements. The PERForm registry will consider limited proposed edits to this University of Michigan BAA document only when required by state law.
   
   
3. Obtain IRB Approval from Local Institutional Review Board (IRB): Each institution (including the coordinating center) is required to receive an IRB approval from their own IRB to provide their institution’s limited clinical dataset to the MSTCVS Quality Collaborative Coordinating Center data warehouse. The University of Michigan IRB example may be used as a model for your institution-specific IRB.

The Data Entry Access Form provides individual access levels to PERForm data entry and reporting tools.

The PERForm Registry uses a certified vendor partner for supporting data entry and querying. The PERForm vendor, ARMUS by Health Catalyst, is also a certified vendor for The Society of Thoracic Surgeons Adult Cardiac Surgery Database. Our vendor partner will supply your team with virtual onboarding training and videos to ensure that you and your team feel comfortable navigating the online data entry and query system.

One of the key features of the PERForm Registry is the ability to autocomplete sets of fields, what we call “thumbprints”. These fields reflect provider and/or center-level practices that are commonly fixed for all (or subsets of cases), including the type of equipment you use (e.g., type of heater-cooler). The concept and specifics of this feature will be discussed with your organization’s training.

As part of participating in the PERForm Registry, your team will submit a surgical harvest file (your institution’s Society of Thoracic Surgeons Adult Cardiac Surgery data) to the PERForm Registry’s Data Coordinating Center.  The Data Coordinating Center will provide your team with a secure mechanism for data transmission. These data, which will be probabilistically matched with your team’s PERForm data harvest, will be used as part of the quarterly benchmarking reports that are transmitted to each center.

Link to PERForm FAQs