The National Cardiac Arrest Collaborative (NCAC) committee on establishing a national cardiac arrest registry will meet in San Diego, CA, on October 4th during the American College of Emergency Physicians annual conference. Related task forces will address structure and function of the registry, advocacy, and data interoperability.
The development of a “National Cardiac Arrest Registry” is seen as a critical first step to improving public health. The concept was deliberated at an NCAC meeting in December. Stakeholders present reached consensus that a public-private partnership model that leveraged two existing cardiac arrest registries (CARES - Cardiac Arrest Registry to Enhance Survival for out-of-hospital cardiac arrests and GWTG-R – Get With The Guidelines - Resuscitation registry for in-hospital cardiac arrests) should be the starting point, rather than creating a new singular registry.
Led by Co-Chairs Richard Bradley, MD, FACEP (American Red Cross/ University of Texas) and Clifton Callaway, MD, PhD (American Heart Association/ University of Pittsburgh), the NCAC has convened twice to begin addressing the recommendations of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) report on improving survival from cardiac arrest.
The inaugural NCAC meeting took place in May 2017 at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, MD. The meeting was a follow up to a workshop conducted in Washington, DC in July 2016 that explored recommendations of the IOM report. A second meeting was held in December 2017 at the Emergency Cardiovascular Care Update in New Orleans, LA.
NCAC member organizations include the American Heart Association, American Red Cross, National Heart Lung and Blood Institute, Sudden Cardiac Arrest Foundation and Parent Heart Watch. For more information, contact ncac [at] cardiac-arrest.net.