title: Closing the gap-cardiovascular risk and primary prevention: results from the American College of Physicians quality improvement program.
abstract: The objective was to study the impact of a practice-based quality improvement program on practice teams' care for patients who have increased risk of cardiovascular disease. A total of 54 team members from 18 internal medicine practices participated in an educational program that used a pre-post intervention study design and focused on measures related to cardiovascular risk factors. The program involved live instruction, faculty-led conference calls, practice data collection, and progress reports detailing practices' improvement strategies. Data on 817 patients were reported. Practices showed significant improvement in counseling for diet (70% to 78%), exercise (67% to 74%), and weight loss (64% to 72%). Use of aspirin (53% to 64%) and statins (83% to 89%) also showed significant improvement. Administration of flu vaccine increased significantly from 51% to 54%. Improvements in patient counseling and medication management, if sustained, should lead to fewer cardiovascular events. However, program duration did not allow the capture of outcomes measures improvement.
authors.affiliation: American College of Physicians, Philadelphia, PA 19106, USA.
authors.forename: Vincenza
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Snow
authors.forename: Cara Egan
authors.initials: CE
authors.lastname: Reynolds
authors.forename: Lia
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Bennett
authors.forename: Kevin B
authors.initials: KB
authors.lastname: Weiss
authors.forename: Qianna
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Snooks
authors.forename: Amir
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Qaseem
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D002318:Cardiovascular Diseases / Q000517:prevention & control*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011322:Primary Prevention / Q000379:methods* / Q000592:standards; D011785:Quality Assurance, Health Care; D040242:Risk Reduction Behavior; D012955:Societies, Medical