The American College of Cardiology released a health policy statement endorsing team-based care and outlining the inclusion of advanced-practice practitioners.

The ACC’s strategic plan is aligned with the triple aim of improved care, improved population health, and lower costs per capita. The traditional understanding of quality, access, and cost is that you cannot improve one component without diminishing the others. With cardiovascular team-based care, it is possible to achieve the triple aim of improving quality, access, and cost simultaneously to also improve cardiovascular health. (read the statement)

The statement lists the advantages of several different models for team-based care, from the traditional care model to health clinics and a population health framework. These include reduced readmissions, reduced hospitalizations, reliable use of evidence-based therapies, consistent documentation of education, improved patient safety, efficient use of workforce, and improved access and care coordination.

The statement stresses the importance of inter-professional education in facilitating team-based care:

Inter-professional education facilitates greater interaction among providers across different disciplines. The interaction leads to conversations that can inspire new thinking and ideas for improving cardiovascular team-based care and can help dispel lingering, misguided professional stereotypes.

The Alliance of Cardiovascular Professionals consistently provides high quality cardiovascular-specific inter-professional education. View our meeting schedule. If your institution is interested in expanding inter-professional education for your cardiovascular teams, consider an institutional ACVP membership.

Next week, ACVP Blog will bring you more analysis of this Health Policy Statement, including regulatory barriers to team-based care. Subscribe by email to be notified of new posts directly in your inbox.