Benchmarking and Quality Improvement – Essential Characteristic #5

Posted on by Kurt Jensen
cardiovascular quality improvement

Is it obvious? Highly effective cardiovascular teams demonstrate commitment to cardiovascular quality improvement.

In a 2014 report entitled "Cardiovascular Care High Performers," the National Committee for Quality Assurance detailed the importance of benchmarking and continuous cardiovascular quality improvement.

What is the practice culture of effective cardiovascular teams, according to the report? It's characterized by a "strong organizational commitment to improving quality, to openness at being measured on performance and having results shared within the practice, to working on closing gaps and to trying new strategies to engage patients."

Commitment and openness, especially to being measured, sharing results, and working on closing quality gaps, has been proven to improve outcomes, from a single group to an entire state.

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Can Statins Reduce Heart Risk? – Cardiac News Round-Up

Posted on by Kurt Jensen
Statins

Statins are a big question in cardiac care.

Kaiser Permanente proudly reported last week the increased adoption of their daily statin regimen, but is the increased use of statins positive or negative?

Kaiser Permanente "ALL" quality improvement protocol increased prescription of heart and stroke risk medication regimen by 40 percent in community health centers. (Medical News Today, June 11)

The medication regimen bundles two generic drugs - a cholesterol-lowering statin and a blood pressure-lowering drug in daily doses to patients with diabetes or heart disease.

In 2009, Kaiser Permanente released a study showing that their protocol lowers the chance of hospitalization for heart attack or stroke the following year by more than 60 percent.

Statin association with memory loss in question? (MedPage Today, June 8)

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Simple Test After Heart Attack Predicts Heart Failure

Posted on by Kurt Jensen

heartattackThe University of Glasgow presented research at the British Cardiovascular Society's annual conference, yesterday that proves a pressure- and temperature-sensitive wire inserted into a coronary artery after a heart attack can predict heart failure.

The standard assessment, a coronary angiogram, "can only identify narrowed vessels and cannot tell the doctor if, or how much, heart blood vessel damage has occurred," writes Medical News Today. Using the wire, the level of damage to arteries after a heart attack can be assessed in minutes -- a key indicator of high risk for heart failure.

The new assessment could lead to quicker treatment of patients at greatest risk for heart failure and improve outcomes.

Essential Characteristic #3 – Experts Need Checklists

Posted on by Kurt Jensen

char3checklists

"One of the most extensive recommendations in the consensus statement," writes the Advisory Board Company's Jake Hartman on a consensus statement released by cardiology leaders in a 2012 edition of Catheterization and Cardiovascular Interventions, "the group recommends that hospitals develop a detailed preprocedure checklist to ensure all safety precautions appropriate for the cath lab have been taken."

In December of 2009, Atul Gawande, MD released a book called A Checklist Manifesto, a strong argument for the use of pre-procedure checklists in medicine and other fields.

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