Heart attack and stroke, which together are called cardiovascular disease, cause over 1/3 of all deaths in VA patients. The current guidelines for the prevention of these conditions focus on lowering patients' blood pressure and cholesterol levels. A new treatment strategy, which I call benefit-based tailored treatment, that instead guides treatment decisions based on the likelihood that a medication would prevent a heart attack or stroke could prevent more cardiovascular disease, with lower medication use, and be more patient centered. The purpose of this Career Development Award is to develop and assess tools and approaches that could enable the implementation of benefit-based tailored treatment of cardiovascular disease, in particular a decision support tool and educational program for clinicians and a performance profiling system. The decision support tool will enable better care by showing clinicians patient-specific estimates of the likelihood that their medication decisions will prevent a cardiovascular disease event. The performance profiling system will encourage better care by assessing the quality of care provided at VA sites and in PACT teams based on how well the medical care provided follows this treatment strategy. The project will have three aims.
Aim 1 : In the first aim, I will seek to understand clinicians' and patients' perceptions of and receptivity to the use of benefit-based tailored treatment for cardiovascular disease. Information gained from qualitative research with clinicians will help assess and improve the usability and effectiveness of the decision support tool and educational program for clinicians, along with the acceptability of the treatment strategies in general. Information gained from focus groups with patients will help learn their priorities in cardiovascular disease prevention, to help identify ways to make the interventions and their assessments more patient-centered.
Aim 2 : In the second aim, the decision support tool and educational program will be assessed in a real-world randomized pilot study involving thirty clinicians. Half of the clinicians will be provided the decision support tool and education intervention for ten patients each, the other half will receive a traditional quality improvement program and treatment reminders. The study will have formative goals of ensuring that clinicians and patients believe the tool is valuable and does not disrupt care processes or workflow for anyone in the PACT team. This will be studied with qualitative and survey assessments. The primary summative outcome will be the influence of the intervention on clinicians' treatment decisions. Secondary outcomes will assess patients' satisfaction with their visits and their clinicians.
Aim 3 :
The third aim will develop and evaluate a novel performance measurement system based on benefit- based tailored treatment. First, the performance profiling system will be developed. Then the profiling system's ability to reliably differentiate high quality from low-quality care will be evaluated.
Heart attack and stroke, which together are called cardiovascular disease, cause over 1/3 of all deaths in VA patients. The current guidelines for the prevention of these conditions focus on lowering patients' blood pressure and cholesterol levels. A new treatment strategy that instead guides treatment decisions based on the likelihood that a medication would prevent a heart attack or stroke could be more efficient than current guidelines, but would be a major cognitive, policy, and technical change in care. The purpose of this Career Development Award is to develop and assess tools and approaches that prepare for the use of this new, more efficient and patient centered approach. These tools will include a decision support tool for clinicians and a novel performance measurement system to assess quality of care.
