What indicators should facilities track that will provide meaningful data for evaluating vascular access programs?
Facilities can start by measuring performance on a monthly basis by access type – catheter, arteriovenous (AV) graft, and AV fistula – since access type is the major determinant of outcomes and directly affects dialysis delivery and adequacy. It is also important to focus specifically on native AV fistula outcomes and performance, including tracking the monthly AV fistula placement and failure rate in incident as well as prevalent patients. The National Vascular Access Improvement Initiative (NVAII) has developed a the Vascular Access Tracking Tool (VATT), a data collection tool that can help facilities measure and track AV fistula rates (and all access types) in incident and prevalent patients. This data tool (in Microsoft Excel format) permits simple tracking of not only AV fistulae that are in use but also AV fistulae that have been placed and are awaiting maturation. In addition to access types, a summary of the minimum vascular access-related measurements that facilities should tr
