The PERC Quality Assurance Registry

Acute pulmonary embolism is the third-leading cause of cardiovascular mortality in the United States, nearly as common as heart attack and stroke, and the leading cardiovascular cause of in-hospital death. In response to these sobering realities, the medical community has intensified efforts to improve PE detection and expand treatment options, while device and pharmaceutical companies are developing innovative new therapies.

Despite this momentum, significant gaps remain in our understanding of PE risk stratification, acute management, and patient outcomes. To address these gaps, the National PERT Consortium® has been a driving force in the field — championing high-quality, multidisciplinary team-based care, educating clinicians, patients, and stakeholders on best practices, and building a robust quality assurance registry that now includes more than 30 U.S. institutions and over 6,800 patients. The rapid, widespread adoption of the PERT model — across the U.S. and globally — reflects the urgent need to improve recognition, management, and outcomes for patients with acute PE.

Improving PE care requires a deeper understanding of every component of acute management: clinical presentation and risk stratification, decisions around escalation of care, the mechanisms and impact of specific therapies, imaging and physiologic parameters, and meaningful measures of patient outcomes.

To meaningfully compare outcomes across management approaches, it is essential to define and standardize the data being collected and analyzed. PERC™ brings together key stakeholders to establish practical, consensus-driven data elements — with common standards and definitions — that form the foundation for evaluating, treating, and assessing patients with acute PE across clinical care, quality assurance, and research.