All Massachusetts hospitals that perform cardiac surgery will submit patient and surgeon specific data to Mass-DAC every six months. In addition, 30 day follow-up and mortality data will be submitted to Mass-DAC. Data will be collected by each hospital utilizing the Society of Thoracic Surgeons (STS) National Cardiac Database Instrument. All data will be collected with no exclusions, including identifying demographic information on both patient and physician. Additional details/instructions on what is required and all required forms may be downloaded from the Cardiac Surgery Project Forms Download page.

Submission Instructions:

Data Submission Manual 2.61 - (Updated Aug 2, 2010) Instructions for data submissions to Mass-DAC.
    (Download manual and all forms in a zip file)

Data Submission Demographic File Specifications 2.61 (pdf) - Instructions for formatting demographic file fields based on STS 2.61 specifications. If your software only allows you to enter a 2-character value in the COUNTRY field, than you should use the 2-character country abbreviations from the ISO web site, ISO.org 3166 Country Code Lists. If you can enter the full country name, that is preferred.

Harvest Schedule
Download the CS Submission Timeline (pdf) , which includes data submission harvest months, close-out months, and adjudication periods for each of the next several fiscal reporting years, or view individual details with the links below.