Dear MPOG Colleagues,

Welcome to the Summer 2026 MPOG Newsletter!

This edition highlights the continued growth and impact of our collaborative, including upcoming opportunities to connect at the ASPIRE Collaborative Meeting and MPOG Retreat, exciting research and clinical trial milestones, new quality measures, and the contributions of our members across the network. We are also pleased to welcome West Virginia University to MPOG, recognize our featured members and fellowship graduates, and share updates from our committees, technical teams, and staff.

Registration is now live for the MPOG Retreat occurring in conjunction with the ASA Annual Meeting in San Diego, California, on Friday October 16, 2026, at the Manchester Grand Hyatt, San Diego. We are looking forward to seeing you either in person or virtually!

Thank you for your ongoing dedication to advancing perioperative quality improvement, research, and education across MPOG.

Allison Janda, MD

MPOG Cardiac Anesthesia Quality Subcommittee Chair

We are pleased to announce our registration is now open for the MPOG Retreat on Friday, October 16, 2026 in San Diego, California.

The MSQC/ASPIRE meeting was held on March 13, 2026 in Lansing, Michigan. Thank you to our guest speakers, panelists, and attendees for making this another successful event. Visit our Archived Events page to view our post meeting recap.

We are pleased to welcome our newest executive board members Drs. Meghan Lane-Fall, G. Burkhard Mackensen, and Warren Sandberg to their three-year term. The Executive Board is comprised of department chairs of active contributing MPOG sites and are elected by a vote of the MPOG department chairs. They provide guidance to MPOG in areas of strategic and operational importance. Read more about our new board members.

They will be joining our existing elected Executive Board members: Drs. Brian Bateman, Joseph Cravero, Cynthia Lien, Jill Mhyre, J. Danny Muehlschlegel, and Ted (Tetsuro) Sakai (see the Executive Board page for a full list of members).

Featured Members

We are excited to recognize Dr. Michael Avidan, Kathy Lee Scranton, and Dr. Patrick Henson as featured members of the MPOG community. Through their leadership, clinical expertise, and dedication to perioperative quality improvement, they continue to make meaningful contributions that strengthen collaboration, innovation, and excellence across the MPOG network. 

We are proud to highlight their achievements and the impact they have made within the MPOG community. Learn more about their backgrounds, accomplishments, and ongoing work on our Featured Member page.



The THRIVE trial team was excited to bring four new enrollment sites on board earlier this year. Johns Hopkins University, Temple University, University of North Carolina, and University of Texas Southwestern joined the 20 existing THRIVE sites, and all have been welcome additions to the study. Patient enrollments continue 4-5 months ahead of schedule, and we anticipate that the last patients will be randomized by April 2027.

The VEGA-2 trial has officially launched at all 10 sites, including the first international site to take part in an MPOG clinical trial. The University of California San Francisco and the University of Michigan have both completed the 14-month study enrollment period. Enthusiasm for the study remains strong, and all participating sites are working hard to keep adherence within the target range. Thank you to all VEGA-2 sites for your engagement and efforts!

The IntraOp Ox trial launched on June 1 at two additional sites: Utah and Nebraska. Trial enrollment at Vanderbilt remains strong. The MPOG Data Coordinating Center (DCC) is working closely with the Clinical Coordinating Center (CCC) to deliver a successful trial.  We look forward to the University of Michigan, the final site, launching the trial on September 1, 2026. The trial aims to better understand how oxygen use during anesthesia impacts patient outcomes.

The Precision Analytics for Coaching Effectiveness (PACE) initiative, led by Dr. Matt Caldwell, Dr. Norah Naughton and Lara Zisblatt at the University of Michigan, is a multicenter education initiative that uses MPOG clinical data to support coaching, reflection, and progressive autonomy in anesthesiology residency training. The PACE and MPOG Education teams have begun designing and developing the PACE dashboard, including work on new phenotypes that will help translate clinical data into meaningful educational insights. This effort represents an important step toward creating tools that can support individualized feedback and data-informed growth for residents across participating programs. The initiative is currently on track for launch to MPOG sites in September 2027.

Congratulations to Dr. Ayesha Bryant and Dr. Alexander Doyal on completing the 2025-2026 MPOG Fellowship!  

Thank you, Dr. Bryant and Dr. Doyal, for all your hard work; we are eager to see the impact you’ll have in MPOG and the field of anesthesia!  

The Quality Committee remained actively engaged in reviewing and refining MPOG quality measures, with a particular focus on transfer of care and perioperative glycemic management. During the February meeting, the committee approved updates to the TOC-02 measure to update exclusions while voting to keep the TOC-03 measure unchanged. At the May meeting, the committee completed a comprehensive review of the glycemic management measure bundle, resulting in modifications to hypoglycemia and hyperglycemia treatment measures, including shorter treatment windows for severe hypoglycemia (15-30 minutes) and perioperative hyperglycemia (60 minutes).

The Coordinating Center proposed improvements to the dashboard by adding ambulatory surgery center benchmarking and case volume data. Finally, a Best Practice Exchange segment has been added to future measure review discussions to highlight successful quality improvement strategies across member sites. The next Quality Committee meeting will be hosted virtually at 10am EST on July 27. Please contact mpog-admin@med.umich.edu to be added to meeting invites.

Since the Winter 2026 newsletter, MPOG has released two new quality measures that expand performance assessment in perioperative care. SUS-09, released in March, measures the percentage of cases with a mean fresh gas flow of 6 L/min or less during the induction phase of anesthesia. This measure is intended to support evaluation of fresh gas flow practices and promote more environmentally sustainable anesthetic delivery. GLU-14-C, released in June, measures the proportion of adult open cardiac surgery cases in which the last intraoperative blood glucose level before anesthesia end is ≤180 mg/dL. This measure is intended to support evaluation of intraoperative glucose management practices during adult open cardiac surgery. 

The Cardiac Subcommittee welcomed Dr. Ashan Grewal (University of Maryland) as its new Vice Chair and continues to refine existing quality measures while advancing development of new measures to support perioperative care in adult cardiac surgery. Since the Winter 2026 newsletter, the committee approved GLU-14-C, a new cardiac glucose measure assessing the proportion of adult open cardiac surgery cases with a final intraoperative blood glucose level ≤180 mg/dL. The measure is now available in the MPOG QI Reporting Tool. 

The committee also approved updates to several existing measures. Revisions to the cardiac glucose measure suite (GLU-06-C, GLU-07-C, and GLU-08-C) incorporate subcutaneous insulin into measure logic and refine provider attribution to better reflect clinical practice. In addition, following the recent expansion of TRAN-01 to include open cardiac surgery cases, the committee approved revisions to better align the measure with cardiac transfusion practices by evaluating each qualifying hemoglobin value independently rather than only the first occurrence. 

Looking ahead, the committee identified a cardiac-specific neuromuscular blockade reversal measure as its next development priority, with plans to subsequently expand multimodal pain assessment to include cardiac surgery. Additional areas of interest include refinement of cardiac transfusion measures, development of a fast-track cardiac phenotype, and exploration of extubation timing measures. 

The next Cardiac Subcommittee meeting is planned for late summer 2026. All Cardiac Subcommittee meetings are open to anyone interested in improving cardiac anesthesia care. To receive future meeting invitations, please contact mpog-admin@med.umich.edu.

The OB Subcommittee recognized participating member Dr. Daniel Berenson (Brigham and Women's Hospital), who received the 2026 SOAP Patient Safety Award for his MPOG-based research examining factors associated with conversion to general anesthesia during cesarean delivery. 

The subcommittee also released NCR-01-OB, a new departmental quality measure evaluating epidural catheter replacement during neuraxial anesthesia for childbirth. While additional refinements are planned, participating sites can now review performance on departmental dashboards within the QI Reporting Tool. 

Looking ahead, the subcommittee also established its highest priorities for the coming year, including enhancements to neuraxial replacement measures, publication of an UDP-01-OB (Unintended Dural Puncture) measure, development of a pregnancy gestational age phenotype, and creation of an obstetric-specific IONV/PONV prophylaxis measure. The next OB Subcommittee meeting will be held on September 16 at 1:00 p.m. ET via Zoom. To receive future meeting invitations, please contact mpog-admin@med.umich.edu.

The MPOG Pediatric Subcommittee continues to expand both pediatric participation and pediatric-specific quality improvement initiatives across the collaborative. During the first half of 2026, two additional pediatric hospitals joined MPOG, Riley Hospital for Children in Indianapolis and UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland, bringing participation to 32 pediatric hospitals and further strengthening national representation across pediatric anesthesia practice settings. The pediatric dataset now includes approximately 3.9 million anesthetic cases, providing important opportunities to evaluate pediatric subgroups and clinical populations that are often underrepresented in other datasets. 

The committee recently reviewed AKI-03-Peds, the first MPOG measure developed specifically for pediatric cardiac anesthesia, which evaluates rates and severity of acute kidney injury following cardiopulmonary bypass and is now available on the MPOG QI Reporting Tool. Early review demonstrated meaningful variation across pediatric cardiac centers, supporting continued discussion through the Pediatric Cardiac Workgroup. 

Several pediatric measures are currently under review or in development. TRAN-06-Peds is being developed as an informational process measure focused on preoperative anemia among pediatric patients undergoing elective major non-cardiac surgery at increased risk for transfusion. TEMP-04-Peds was reviewed with proposed updates to increase the minimum case duration, and change the success criterion from median temperature to duration of hypothermia below 36°C. PAIN-01-Peds was also reviewed, with discussion focused on whether the current process measure remains valuable given high performance across sites and whether future work should shift toward an outcome-based pediatric pain measure incorporating PACU pain scores and rescue opioid use. 



The next Pediatric Committee meeting is scheduled for October 16, 2026, during the MPOG Retreat in San Diego, CA, with a virtual option available. The meeting will include continued discussion of pediatric pain measure development and other pediatric quality improvement priorities. All pediatric committee meetings are open to anyone interested in improving pediatric anesthesia care. Please contact Meridith Wade if you are interested in attending or participating in pediatric measure review activities.

Welcome back, Brooke Szymanski-Bogart!

Brooke Szymanski-Bogart MSN, RN, CPN has re-joined MPOG as a Clinical Research Informatics Specialist. Brooke has a background in adult and pediatric acute care nursing, most recently serving as the nursing supervisor for both an inpatient oncology unit and a surgical short stay unit. Prior to her leadership role, Brooke was a Quality Improvement Coordinator at MPOG from 2019-2021 during which time she guided sites through onboarding, participated in measure development, and worked closely with the OB Subcommittee. Brooke is excited to be back at MPOG in her new role facilitating phenotype development for research projects and clinical trials