Dear MPOG Colleagues,

I am delighted to welcome you to our Winter 2026 Newsletter. I am grateful for the dedication and collaboration shown across our community, which continues to drive meaningful advances in perioperative care. Your ongoing engagement and commitment drive the collective progress across research, quality improvement and education missions.  

This edition highlights the breadth of work across MPOG. We provide updates on clinical trial milestones, impactful quality improvement work, new analytics initiatives, and updates from the tireless work of our subcommittees in advancing perioperative care.

Thank you for your ongoing collaboration to improve the care we provide in operating rooms across the world. 

Yours Sincerely, 

Douglas Colquhoun
Associate Research Director, MPOG

Click the button below for more information and to register for the MSQC/ASPIRE Collaborative meeting on March 13, 2026.

The MPOG 2025 Retreat, held on October 10, 2025 during the ASA Annual Meeting in San Antonio, highlighted the collaborative spirit and innovation of the MPOG community. Sessions focused on perioperative quality, including PONV management, ambulatory anesthesiology, opioid stewardship, sedation practices, and transfusion and fluid management. Highlights included “Best of MPOG” presentations, Emerging Scholar research, and updates on MPOG’s data infrastructure, quality initiatives, and trials such as VEGA-2 and IntraOp Ox, underscoring MPOG’s leadership in data-driven perioperative quality improvement and research. For post meeting notes, see our Archived Events page.

We’re excited to highlight Xan Abess, MD (Dartmouth), Megan Anders, MD, MS (University of Maryland), and Bethany Pennington, PharmD, BCPS (Washington University) for their valuable contributions to MPOG. Their expertise and engagement continue to strengthen collaborative quality improvement and research across the network. 

It is a pleasure to showcase their expertise and contributions to the MPOG community. Read more about them on our Featured Member page. 



The THRIVE trial has now randomized over 8,700 patients and is approximately five months ahead of schedule. Last spring, we started the process of onboarding four new recruitment sites, Johns Hopkins University, University of Texas Southwestern, University of North Carolina, and Temple University. All four sites are now active. The coordinating center teams are working with our Patient Partner Panel and External Stakeholder Panel to prepare the broader perioperative community for the dissemination of study results.

The VEGA‑2 trial is progressing well, with six out of the ten planned sites currently onboarded and two more sites, Henry Ford and Duke, expected to begin their pilot period in March. Site engagement remains strong, with study teams providing monthly treats as a fun incentive to help clinical teams remember to use the designated primary vasopressor of the month and foster a positive atmosphere. We are incredibly appreciative of our outstanding active sites, UCSF, University of Maryland, University of Michigan, University of Texas Southwestern, University of Virginia, and Wake Forest.

The IntraOp Ox trial was launched at Vanderbilt in December 2025. Overall, study progress is going well. Three additional sites will eventually participate: University of Utah, University of Nebraska, and University of Michigan. Each participating site has completed the relying IRB process to defer to the sIRB at Vanderbilt. Additionally, sites are participating in a monthly Network meeting to learn about progress at Vanderbilt in anticipation of launching at their own site.

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 sponsored by the American Medical Association Precision Education grant program and launched January 2026. Over the next four years, PACE will use MPOG electronic health record data to create personalized learning dashboards and coaching tools for anesthesiology residents across training programs. This project aims to give residents greater agency over their learning by identifying strengths, experience gaps, and opportunities for growth.

We are excited to announce Dr. Nicholas Mendez and Dr. Irum Khan from the University of California San Francisco as our 2026-2027 Outcomes Research Fellows. This one-year fellowship offers researchers close mentorship and engagement within MPOG, culminating in a Practicum Capstone Project utilizing MPOG data.

Nicholas Mendez, MD is an Assistant Professor in the UCSF Department of Anesthesia and Perioperative Care. After earning his medical degree from the Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine, he completed an anesthesiology residency at the University of Miami/Jackson Memorial Hospital. He joined UCSF in 2020 for a fellowship in Liver Transplant Anesthesia. Dr. Mendez focuses his research on leveraging large datasets to evaluate and improve perioperative outcomes. As an MPOG Fellow, he will investigate practice pattern variations in anesthesia for magnetic resonance imaging, aiming to establish data-driven safety standards for patients undergoing anesthesia in complex non-operating room environments.

Irum Khan, MD, PhD is an Assistant Professor in the UCSF Department of Anesthesiology and Perioperative Care. She grew up in Nigeria and earned her medical degree from Aga Khan University in Pakistan, followed by a PhD in MRI‑based neuroscience at the University of Nottingham in the United Kingdom. She subsequently completed anesthesiology residency training at Hahnemann University Hospital, followed by a Critical Care Medicine fellowship at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York. Dr. Khan is board certified in Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine.



At UCSF, Dr. Khan practices as both a general anesthesiologist and critical care physician. Her research focuses on supraglottic airway utilization and its impact on perioperative efficiency and resource use. As an MPOG Fellow, she will evaluate whether supraglottic airway use is associated with improvements in anesthesia phase times and medication utilization, with the goal of informing data‑driven optimization of modern perioperative care.

The Quality Committee completed reviews of our PUL-01 (tidal volume) and PUL-03 (PEEP use) measures, voting to add a bronchoscopy exclusion to PUL-01 and to retain the current ≥2 cm H₂O PEEP floor for PUL-03. Strong support was expressed for developing a future bundled ventilation measure combining low tidal volume and PEEP.

The committee also introduced a new informational cardiac measure, TRAN-05, to assess coagulation testing during transfusion episodes in adult cardiac surgery. In addition, members discussed launching a Best-Practices Exchange to highlight successful workflows from high-performing or improving sites, with the Coordinating Center developing a proposal for future meetings.

New Measures

Since the Summer 2025 newsletter, MPOG has released several new quality measures spanning cardiac, pediatric, and obstetric care. TRAN-05-C is an informational measure designed to highlight variation in coagulation testing during transfusion episodes in adult open cardiac surgery. AKI-03-Peds assesses rates of postoperative acute kidney injury following cardiopulmonary bypass, supporting monitoring of renal outcomes in high-risk pediatric populations. In obstetrics, NCR-01-OB measures the frequency of neuraxial catheter replacement during labor or cesarean delivery and is intended to support departmental-level quality review and practice evaluation.

At the December meeting, the group reviewed updates to an existing cardiac glucose measure (GLU-06-C), discussed updates to the recently published TRAN-05-C (coagulation monitoring for open cardiac cases) measure, and approved development of a new measure, GLU-14-C, focused on achieving a final intraoperative glucose ≤180 mg/dL. Unblinded performance reviews highlighted strong GLU-08-C treatment performance, persistent challenges with GLU-06 hyperglycemia avoidance, and the importance of balancing hypoglycemia risk (GLU-07-C). Measures TEMP-06-C, TEMP-07-C, and BP-07-C were also reviewed, with excellent accompanying discussions. We thank the cardiac subcommittee for another productive year and are looking forward to developing more measures throughout 2026. The next cardiac subcommittee meeting is planned for March 2026, date and time to be announced.

In late 2025, the OB Subcommittee reviewed several obstetric-specific phenotypes and quality measures. Members reached consensus on defining specifications for the now released an ‘Obstetrics- Is Pregnant’ phenotype, currently available for use in obstetric research and QI projects. In addition, the subcommittee updated “definitions” of general anesthesia for obstetric procedures, using factors such as airway placement, administration of neuromuscular blockade and/or inhaled anesthetics. Nitrous oxide administration alone will no longer qualify as GA for the obstetric general anesthesia measures (GA-01-OB, GA-02-OB, GA-03-OB). The Coordinating Center continues to work on the updates necessary to implement this change and anticipate the measures to be updated in Spring 2026.  

The subcommittee approved development of a new obstetric-specific measure assessing IONV/PONV prophylaxis for cesarean delivery. The adult PONV prophylaxis measure (PONV-05) will be updated in 2026 to exclude cesarean patients, pending the release of the obstetric-specific measure. In addition, the Neuraxial Catheter Replacement measure (NCR-01-OB) has been released as a departmental-only, inverse measure and is now available in the MPOG QI Reporting Tool. 

Finally, the MPOG Coordinating Center would like to thank Dr. Wandana Joshi for her service as Vice Chair over the last two years. Her contributions are much appreciated! 

We would also like to welcome Dr. Sharon Reale as the new OB Subcommittee Vice Chair! Dr. Reale serves as the Obstetric Anesthesia Fellowship Program Director for Brigham and Women’s Hospital and has published several impactful obstetric anesthesia studies using MPOG data. We look forward to her participation in this new role! 

The MPOG Pediatric Subcommittee continues to help maintain and develop pediatric measure. The most recent measure released is the pediatric cardiac anesthesia quality measure, AKI-03-Peds, assessing rates and severity of acute kidney injury following cardiopulmonary bypass. This outcome measure is now available on the MPOG QI Reporting Tool and visible on both the Pediatric and All Measures dashboards.

Several pediatric measures have recently been modified or are undergoing updates. NMB-03-Peds was revised to exclude emergent cases and those with more than 180 minutes between first neuromuscular blocker dose and extubation. TRAN-03-Peds was updated to include any PRBC transfusion regardless of volume, exclude emergent cases, and allow multiple PRBC administrations within 60 minutes without requiring repeat laboratory testing. For SUS-05-Peds, the committee elected not to add a ≤2-minute nitrous oxide exclusion, maintaining the measure’s focus on avoidance of nitrous oxide during inhalational induction. This year, the committee plans to review PAIN-01-Peds, TEMP-04-Peds, FLUID-02-Peds and SUS-06-Peds. Updates to PONV-04-Peds are currently in progress to align with new 2025 PONV consensus guidelines. Members expressed strong interest in new measure development focused on pediatric patient blood management in high-risk, non-cardiac surgical populations, as well as postoperative pain measures centered on severe PACU pain and opioid utilization patterns.

Finally, we would like to thank Dr. Vikas O’Reilly-Shah (Seattle Children’s) for his service as Chair as he concluded his term in December 2025. Dr. Morgan Brown (Boston Children’s) assumed the Chair role beginning January 1, 2026. We are also pleased to welcome Dr. Eva Lu-Boettcher (University of Wisconsin American Family Children’s Hospital) as Vice Chair. The committee received an outstanding pool of applicants, reflecting the strength of pediatric engagement and leadership across MPOG.

Our next meeting is scheduled for March 2, 2026 at 4pm eastern via Zoom. 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.

Megan Charette, BSN, RN, MPH, MBA has joined our group as a QI Specialist. She has a multidisciplinary background spanning critical care and surgical nursing, trauma and transplant research, as well as population health analytics. She has contributed to multiple peer-reviewed publications and is passionate about improving healthcare quality through data analysis and collaborative clinical discussion. She recently completed an MBA at the University of Toledo and now spends her free time with her husband and dogs.

Melanie Herren, MSN, RN, CNOR joins us as our newest Clinical Informatics Specialist.



Melanie has a strong background in the operating room as a certified circulating nurse, and most recently served as the Professional Development Specialist for Surgical Services at Trinity Health. She earned her Master of Science in Nursing with a concentration and certificate in Health Informatics from the University of Michigan. She is passionate about using data to tell a story and to inspire innovation throughout healthcare. She is excited to bring her clinical background and informatics expertise to our team.

Outside of work, Melanie enjoys life at home with her two giant dogs: Grady, a 150‑pound Newfoundland who loves the snow a little too much, and Luna, a 130‑pound Great Dane who insists on sleeping under the blankets.