Medical specialty societies and associations have a responsibility to help members define, measure, and report value—or someone else will do it for them. And registries such as APTA's Physical Therapy Outcomes Registry are important vehicles for staying ahead of the curve.

This was 1 takeaway from a recent PT Pintcast podcast featuring Heather Smith, PT, MPH, APTA director of quality, and Nathan Glusenkamp, a registry expert who is director of registries at the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS).

For Glusenkamp, associations are ideal for developing clinical registries because they bring "specialized experience" that can’t be matched. He is "a firm believer that if [medical specialty societies] are not engaged in defining value, reporting value, measuring value—that’s still going to happen, but it’s probably going to happen in a way [members] don’t like."

Smith believes that association-run registries also serve another important function: helping providers get a handle on the seemingly inevitable move toward value-based health care.

"I can’t stress enough, being prepared ahead of time and really getting involved as early as possible to start to think about the value that you bring," Smith says in the podcast. "Not just in the care that you deliver today, but think more broadly in new and different ways we may be able to bring value to the health care system. Being able to support payment for these services in new and emerging models is really exciting. So you’ve got to be involved to reap the benefits of the new frontier we’re moving into."

Listen to the full podcast at www.ptpintcast.com.