Prioritized Clinical Decision Support (CDS) to Reduce Cardiovascular Risk

This project developed and implemented a sophisticated point-of-care EHR-based clinical decision support that (a) identified and (b) prioritized all available evidence-based treatment options to reduce a given patient's cardiovascular risk (CVR). The prioritized list of treatment options is provided in different formats to both the primary care physician (PCP) and patient at the time of each office visit made by a patient with moderate to high CVR and sub-optimally controlled and potentially reversible CVR factors. Available evidence-based treatment options are prioritized based on the magnitude of potential CVR reduction of each treatment option. This intervention strategy, referred to as Prioritized Clinical Decision Support (CDS), is specifically designed for widespread use in primary care settings and has the potential to substantially augment current efforts to control CVR in the 35% of American adults with 10-year Framingham CVR of 10% or higher. To assess the ability of the CDS intervention to reduce CVR in adults, we randomized 18 primary care clinics with 60 primary care physicians (PCPs) and approximately 18,000 eligible adults with baseline Framingham 10-year risk of a major CV event (either heart attack or stroke) of 10% or more into one of two experimental conditions: Group 1 includes 9 clinics (with 30 PCPs and 9,000 patients) that received prioritized clinical decision support (CDS) to reduce CVR at the time of each clinical encounter made by an eligible adult. Group 2 includes 9 clinics (with 30 PCPs and 9,000 patients) that received no study intervention and constitute a usual care (UC) control group. The study formally tested the hypothesis that after control for baseline CVR, post-intervention 10-year Framingham CVR will be better in Group 1 than Group 2 at 12 months after start of the intervention. In addition, impact of the intervention on specific components of CVR (BP, lipids, glucose, aspirin use, and smoking) was assessed, and the cost-effectiveness of the intervention will be quantified. This innovative project builds upon 10 years of prior work by our research team, and extends prior successful EHR clinical decision support interventions by introducing prioritization, by providing decision support to both patients and PCPs at the time of the office visit, and by extending the decision support across the broad and critically important clinical terrain of CVR reduction. The results of this project, whether positive or negative, will extend our understanding of how to maximize the clinical return on massive public and private sector investments now being made in sophisticated outpatient EHR systems. If successful, this decision support tool could be broadly used to both standardize and personalize care delivered by case managers, pharmacists, and other providers in a wide range of care delivery configurations.