Canadian Cardiovascular Society

Quality Reporting

The CCS supports and advocates for measuring and reporting national cardiovascular care quality to:

  • Make regional comparisons that highlight where changes are needed;
  • Make evidence-based improvements that close gaps in care; and
  • Ensure accountability for efficient use of resources and optimal health system performance.

Evidence suggests that:

  • Participating in a registry with intermittent benchmarked data reports can lead to improvements in outcomes.1, 2
  • Benchmarking is positively associated with improved mortality, morbidity, and evidence-based clinical practice.3, 4

Since 2017, the CCS has called on the federal government to invest in national quality reporting through several pre-budget submissions & testimonies before the federal Finance Committee.

Watch Dr. Andrew Krahn’s appearance before the Federal Standing Committee on Finance (February 2020).

Read our federal pre-budget submissions: 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020.

Dr. Andrew Krahn’s appearance before the Federal Standing Committee on Finance


Quality reporting resources

Through national consultation, the CCS established how cardiovascular care quality is defined and measured. We encourage local, regional, and national stakeholders to use these resources to inform and facilitate consistent measurement and reporting of care quality across Canada.

  • Data definitions: defines how care quality is measured. The Core Elements and Demographics data definitions includes guidelines for data elements and definitions related to demographics, history and risk factors, co-morbidities, test results, symptoms, and medications. This is supplemented with six chapters organized by specific areas of care.
  • Quality indicators: designed to assess quality based on structures (e.g., wait time), processes (e.g., length of stay), and outcomes (e.g., 30-day mortality) and developed using best practice methodology.
  • Risk adjustment models: refers to statistical models to account for differences in demographic and clinical characteristics of patients to allow comparison of hospital outcomes.

Data definitions and quality indicators have been developed for the following cardiovascular care areas:

Atrial Fibrillation/Flutterdata definitionsquality indicators
Coronary Artery Disease /
Acute Coronary Syndrome

– Cardiac Surgery
– Percutaneous Coronary Intervention (PCI)
– Transcatheter Aortic Valve Implantation (TAVI)
data definitions
data definitions




quality indicators
quality indicators
quality indicators
risk adjustment model


Cardiac Rehabilitationdata definitions
& quality indicators
Heart Failuredata definitionsquality indicators

CCS national quality reports

The CCS has produced the following national reports on cardiovascular care quality:

  1. Cardiac Care Quality Indicators (CCQI) report in partnership with the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI). The final 2022 update includes data on mortality rates following percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI), coronary artery bypass graft (CABG), aortic valve replacement (AVR), and combined AVR and CABG, as well as readmission rates after PCI and isolated CABG.

Review previous reports and updates from 2020, 2019, 2018 and 2017.

Review the 2019 Cardiac Surgery and PCI commentaries.

  1. The 2019 National Quality Report: TAVI provides an updated pan-Canadian snapshot of TAVI care across the country between 2013 and 2017.

You can also view the 2016 National Quality Report: TAVI.


  1. Fonarow GC. Improving quality of care and outcomes for heart failure–role of registries. Circ J. 2011. 1106291286-1106291286.
  2. Ambrosy AP, Fonarow, GC, Butler J et al. The global health and economic burden of hospitalizations for heart failure: lessons learned from hospitalized heart failure registries. J Am Coll Cardiol. 2014;63:1123-33.
  3. Young C, Lambert L, Abel J et al. Quality of cardiac care in Canada: recommendations for building a sustainable future. Can J Cardiol. 2018;34:800-03.
  4. Tyrrell L. The impacts of public reporting and external benchmarking in cardiac care: a rapid update of the literature. Institute of Health Economics. 2017.
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