Project 170996

In this research project, we are proposing to develop highly effective reports to give health care professionals, including heart specialists, primary care doctors, nurses, and pharmacists, to help them understand where the care they are currently giving patients with heart disease falls short of current standards. The reports will be based on information that is already collected on all patients who are admitted to the hospital with heart disease and who have specific procedures done to look at the state of their heart and the blood vessels that supply it. These procedures include cardiac catheterization, where a special instrument is inserted into the body and used to view the arteries of the heart. Information about patients with heart disease, especially those who have had a cardiac catheterization, has been collected in the province of Alberta for over ten years. Once the reports are developed, we will distribute them to heart specialists, primary care doctors, nurses, and pharmacists who are involved in caring for patients with heart disease in three hospitals in Alberta, including more rural and more urban hospitals, as well as to care providers in primary care practices that are linked to the hospitals. We will do surveys and observe providers to learn how they respond to the reports, and whether they change their practice to improve the quality of care patients receive. We will use the information we obtain from this study to develop a randomized controlled trial, which will allow us to test whether the intervention works in a bigger, more representative group of hospitals. The information we will get from this study will allow us to develop an efficient, lower-cost randomized controlled trial.

development of a tailored audit with feedback intervention using a large provincial registry to improve cardiovascular care