Care Innovations: Introducing the OUTPACE Framework for Health Care Quality Improvement.

The American Heart Association/American Stroke Association (AHA/ASA) is a trusted source of scientific information in cardiovascular medicine. The AHA/ASA has a longstanding commitment to support state-of-the-art scientific research in cardiovascular disease and stroke. The AHA/ASA has also developed a leadership role in translating cardiovascular science into internationally respected guidelines. In 2000, however, the AHA/ASA concluded that, to provide maximal benefit for patients with cardiovascular disease and those at risk, it needed to develop a rigorous approach to translating its guidelines into clinical practice. The result was a comprehensive suite of programs collectively called Get With The Guidelines (GWTG). Modeled in part on the University of California, Los Angeles Cardiovascular Hospitalization Atherosclerosis Management Program (CHAMP),1,2 GWTG was successfully piloted by the AHA in Massachusetts.3 Based on the success of the Massachusetts pilot, the AHA committed significant human and financial resources to extend the program across the United States. This commitment included the development of a national steering committee composed of AHA/ASA volunteers, and the addition of multiple modules including hospital-based management of coronary artery disease, heart failure, stroke, and resuscitation after in-hospital cardiac arrest. The scientific foundation of the program is the best evidence from the latest American College of Cardiology/AHA/ASA guidelines. GWTG staff work with participating hospitals to implement these guidelines by using AHA/ASA quality improvement professional consultation, workshops, and Webinars. In addition, the AHA developed sophisticated clinical databases (registries) through which hospitals and physicians collect information in real time for the assessment of quality, regional, and national benchmarking, national recognition, and the generation of new science. The AHA underwrites a portion of the costs associated with the technology platform and data collection tools to reduce the financial burden on participating sites. From the 4 GWTG disease-specific registries, >200 articles have been published in peer-reviewed journals. …

Every day, clinicians face difficult decisions on how best to manage a given patient. Important decisions include selection of the appropriate diagnostic tests, procedures, and/or treatments to improve a patient’s outcomes. Ideally, these decisions should be informed and guided by the best medical evidence. In reality, however, clinical practice tends to be highly variable.1 Concerned that a lack of standards for pacemaker implantation was leading to potential overutilization, governmental regulators asked the American Heart Association (AHA) and American College of Cardiology (ACC) in 1984 to evaluate the available evidence and develop recommendations for practice. This led to what became their first clinical practice guideline (CPG).2 Since then, the work of the ACC/AHA Task Force on Practice Guidelines has expanded markedly, currently monitoring ≈17 CPG areas (with a major focus on disease management) and determining when revisions or updates are needed to accurately reflect the evolution of evidence in cardiovascular care. Article p 1330 The process for developing CPGs was outlined in 2003.3,4 The core focus of CPG writing committees is to review and summarize the evidence in the medical literature, relying heavily on randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and when these are not available to turn to other data sources including other forms of trials, meta-analyses, and registry data. The recommendations put forth in a CPG are rigorously classified according to whether a test, procedure, or other treatment is “useful and effective” in a given setting, as well according to the level of evidence supporting this view.3 A notable example of the effort of the Task Force on Practice Guidelines to provide timely responses to a rapidly changing evidence base has been the development of focused updates, the first 3 of which dealt with ST-elevation myocardial infarction, percutaneous coronary intervention, and chronic stable angina, responding to the …

The American College of Cardiology (ACC)/American Heart Association (AHA) performance measurement sets serve as vehicles to accelerate translation of scientific evidence into clinical practice. Measure sets developed by the ACC/AHA are intended to provide practitioners and institutions that deliver cardiovascular services with tools to measure the quality of care provided and identify opportunities for improvement. Writing committees are instructed to consider the methodology of performance measure development1 and to ensure that the measures developed are aligned with ACC/AHA clinical guidelines. The writing committees also are charged with constructing measures that maximally capture important aspects of care quality, including …

Heart disease, cancer, stroke, and diabetes mellitus collectively account for >1.37 million US deaths each year.1 Compounding the tragedy is the knowledge that many of those deaths could be avoided through better application of clinical guidelines related to primary and secondary prevention or disease management. The combined control of blood pressure, lipids, and glucose has been shown to substantially reduce mortality and cardiovascular events.2,3 Screening for colon, cervical, breast, and lung cancer has been proven to reduce age-adjusted mortality from these diseases.4 In recognition of the common risk factors across these disease areas, the chief executive officers of the American Cancer Society, American Diabetes Association, and American Heart Association formed the Preventive Health Partnership in 2004. The 3 organizations have been working closely ever since to increase public awareness about healthy lifestyles, support policies that increase funding for and access to prevention programs and research, and increase the focus on prevention among healthcare providers. The American Cancer Society, American Diabetes Asso ciation, and American Heart Association have long developed scientific statements and evidence-based guidelines that promote public health services and clinical interventions of known efficacy for improving patient outcomes. Thus, maximizing adherence to quality-of-care guidelines is a high priority for each organization, because this will save lives and improve quality of life. This common purpose has served as a focal point for much of the collaborative work undertaken by the 3 organizations, including The Guideline Advantage (TGA). Launched in 2011, TGA is a jointly operated program designed to promote consistent use of evidence-based practice guidelines through existing healthcare technology in the outpatient setting. The ultimate goal of this undertaking is to improve patient care through quality improvement programs that provide feedback to clinicians and their practices on performance across various quality measures. The data gathered …

2020 ACC/AHA Clinical Performance and Quality Measures for Adults With Heart Failure

2016 ACC/AHA guideline focused update on duration of dual antiplatelet therapy in patients with coronary artery disease: A report of the American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association Task Force on Clinical Practice Guidelines

Target Aortic Stenosis: A National Initiative to Improve Quality of Care and Outcomes for Patients With Aortic Stenosis.

Alice K. Jacobs, MD, FACC, FAHA, Chair Jeffrey L. Anderson, MD, FACC, FAHA, Chair-Elect Nancy Albert, PhD, CCNS, CCRN, FAHA Mark A. Creager, MD, FACC, FAHA Steven M. Ettinger, MD, FACC Robert A. Guyton, MD, FACC Jonathan L. Halperin, MD, FACC, FAHA Judith S. Hochman, MD, FACC, FAHA

Cardiovascular disease, the leading cause of death in the United States and worldwide, accounts for substantial suffering and healthcare-related expenditures.1–3 For more than 30 years, the American Heart Association (AHA) and the American College of Cardiology (ACC) have partnered with other organizations to translate the best available scientific evidence into clinical practice guidelines (CPGs) for cardiovascular conditions. These efforts reflect a shared vision and responsibility for using scientific evidence and the expert clinical opinion of leaders in the field to develop recommendations for healthcare providers. These CPGs, based on systematic methods to evaluate and classify evidence, have provided the cornerstones for delivering quality cardiovascular care. CPGs are essential tools for optimizing care for patients with cardiovascular conditions. Enhancing the utility of CPGs requires that the development process reflect the evolution of relevant foundational domains, such as biomedical discoveries, public policy, clinical care systems, and epidemiological knowledge. Dynamic changes in these domains pose substantial implications for organizations that develop CPGs. Among these changes is the increasing prevalence of ≥2 chronic conditions among individual Americans, estimated to be present in more than one quarter of adults.4 In the large population of Medicare beneficiaries, the prevalence of persons with multiple chronic conditions is considerably greater: more than two thirds (68%) have ≥2 chronic conditions, and 14% have ≥6 chronic conditions.5,6 CPGs jointly developed by the AHA/ACC are cardiovascular disease-specific documents focused on the prevention, diagnosis, and management of conditions such as ischemic heart disease, heart failure, and atrial fibrillation. These CPGs often contain considerations for special factors (eg, older adults) and common problems affecting pharmacokinetics (eg, renal impairment). For example, the 2014 CPG on atrial fibrillation7 highlights special considerations for acute myocardial infarction, pregnancy, hyperthyroidism, and other conditions. With the exception of the CPGs on …

ACC/AHA 2008 Performance Measures for Adults With ST-Elevation and Non–ST-Elevation Myocardial Infarction

2020 ACC/AHA Guideline for the Management of Patients With Valvular Heart Disease: A Report of the American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association Joint Committee on Clinical Practice Guidelines.

2017 ACC/AHA/AAPA/ABC/ACPM/AGS/APhA/ASH/ASPC/NMA/PCNA Guideline for the Prevention, Detection, Evaluation, and Management of High Blood Pressure in Adults: Executive Summary: A Report of the American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association Task Force on Clinical Practice Guidelines.

Over the past decade, there has been an increasing awareness that the quality of medical care delivered in the United States is variable. In its seminal document dedicated to characterizing deficiencies in delivering effective, timely, safe, equitable, efficient, and patient-centered medical care, the Institute of Medicine described a quality “chasm”.1 Recognition of the magnitude of the gap between the care that is delivered and the care that ought to be provided has stimulated interest in the development of measures of quality of care and the use of such measures for the purposes of quality improvement and accountability. Consistent with this national focus on healthcare quality, the American College of Cardiology Foundation (ACCF) and the American Heart Association (AHA) have taken a leadership role in developing measures of the quality of care for cardiovascular disease (CVD) in several clinical areas Table 1. The ACCF/AHA Task Force on Performance Measures was formed in February 2000 and was charged with identifying the clinical topics appropriate for the development of performance measures and assembling writing committees composed of clinical and methodological experts. When appropriate, these committees include representatives from other organizations with an interest in the clinical topic under consideration. The committees are informed about the methodology of performance measure development and are instructed to construct measures for use both prospectively and retrospectively, rely upon easily documented clinical criteria, and where appropriate, incorporate administrative data. The data elements required for the performance measures are linked to existing ACCF/AHA clinical data standards to encourage uniform measurements of …

2017 ACC/AHA/HRS guideline for the evaluation and management of patients with syncope: Executive summary: A report of the American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association Task Force on Clinical Practice Guidelines and the Heart Rhythm Society

Glenn N. Levine, MD, FACC, FAHA, Chair Patrick T. O’Gara, MD, FACC, FAHA, Chair-Elect Jonathan L. Halperin, MD, FACC, FAHA, Immediate Past Chair [‡‡][1] Sana M. Al-Khatib, MD, MHS, FACC, FAHA Kim K. Birtcher, PharmD, MS, AACC Biykem Bozkurt, MD, PhD, FACC, FAHA Ralph G. Brindis, MD,