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Abstract P179: Identifying Patterns and Trends in Indicators of Cardiology Practice Quality


 Objective:
 The Cardiology Practice Improvement Pathway was created by the American College of Cardiology (ACC) to monitor and report patterns and trends in indicators of cardiovascular practice quality in the outpatient setting with the goals of providing a tool for practice quality improvement and a framework for practice recognition programs.
 
 
 Methods:
 Eleven practices (107 cardiologists), representing a variety of practice settings and sizes, completed the pilot using four clinical outcome measures (Table). Clinical measure performance was obtained from chart review for patients aged 18 years of age or older with hypertension, coronary artery disease, heart failure, and at least two office visits during the measurement period of 1/1/09-12/31/09.
 
 
 Findings:
 Data from a total of 2560 patient records were submitted (range 36-518 per facility). Variations in performance on clinical outcome measures are displayed in the table below. Overall quality of reported care was high with half of the practices reporting over 75% of hypertensive patients with blood pressure < 140/90, 66% with LDL cholesterol < 100 mg/dl in patients with coronary disease, and over 80% of heart failure patients having the left ventricular ejection fraction assessed. However, there was wide variation in performance across the 11 practices. There as a significant (p<0.05) correlation (r=0.76) between the HTN measures but not between any other pairwise comparisons.
 
 
 Conclusions:
 This pilot suggests there is significant variation in care among outpatient cardiology practices. The feedback of these data on indicators of CV practice quality has the potential to improve performance.
 
 
 
