Healthy Hearts Northwest helps small and mid-sized practices

The U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) wants all patients and providers to benefit from the latest research on how best to prevent and detect diseases—and to care for people who have them. A prime example is heart disease, the nation's number-one killer. That's why AHRQ has funded the MacColl Center for Health Care Innovation at Group Health Research Institute for three years to lead one of seven regional partnerships throughout the nation both to improve heart health among patients in primary care practices and to be better able to improve the quality of care they deliver. It builds on the U.S. Department of Health and Human Service's Million Hearts initiative, with a goal to prevent a million heart attacks and strokes nationwide by 2017.

With partners at Qualis Health, the Oregon Rural Practice Research Network (ORPRN) at the Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU), and the Institute of Translational Health Sciences (ITHS), on May 1 the MacColl Center started inviting small- and medium-sized primary-care practices in Washington, Oregon, and Idaho to participate in Healthy Hearts Northwest: Improving Practice Together. Of the 320 practices to be enrolled, 150 will be in Washington, 130 in Oregon, and 40 in Idaho.

Practices that participate will receive at least 15 months of practice support, technical assistance for health information technology (IT), coaching in quality improvement (QI), and chances to participate in workshops to build QI competencies. The project will use practice facilitation, the Institute for Health Improvement (IHI) improvement model, and data management to improve patients' measures of heart health.

"Healthy Hearts Northwest is an unprecedented opportunity for primary care to prove to the nation that we can make a difference in cardiovascular health at a scale never before tested," said the principal investigator of Health Hearts Northwest, Michael L. Parchman, MD, MPH, a Group Health Research Institute senior investigator and director of the MacColl Center. "Practices that participate will receive resources, support, and a 'roadmap' to build their capacity to really do quality improvement well."

The MacColl Center, the recipient of the $13.7 million grant, will coordinate all project-related activities, including collecting information for evaluation and reporting results. The Center will co-develop activities including enrolling practices, training practice coaches, monthly learning webinars, and outreach visits by academic experts. The MacColl Center, Qualis Health, and OHSU's Oregon Rural Practice-based Research Network all have in common that they are leaders in transforming primary care, with expertise in the medical home, coordinating care, primary care team, and health IT.

This project is supported by grant number R18HS023908 from the AHRQ. The content is solely the responsibility of the researchers and does not necessarily represent the official views of the AHRQ.

EvidenceNOW

Healthy Hearts Northwest is part of EvidenceNOW: Advancing Heart Health in Primary Care, the AHRQ grant initiative to transform health care delivery. Today the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia M. Burwell announced awards of $112 million to regional cooperatives to work with about 5,000 primary care professionals in 12 states to improve the heart health of their nearly 8 million patients. Heart disease is the leading cause of death for men and women in the United States. EvidenceNOW: Advancing Heart Health in Primary Care will help primary care practices in both urban and rural communities use the latest evidence to encourage efforts for Better Care, Smarter Spending, and Healthier People. Today's awards are aligned with the Department's and Million Hearts® national initiative to prevent heart attacks and stroke.

The EvidenceNOW initiative establishes seven regional cooperatives composed of multidisciplinary teams of experts that will each provide quality improvement services to up to 300 small primary care practices. These services include onsite coaching, consultation from experts in health care delivery improvement, sharing best practices, and electronic health record support. This initiative will help small primary care practices incorporate the most recent evidence on how best to deliver the ABCs of cardiovascular prevention into their patients' care:

• Aspirin use by high-risk individuals,
• Blood pressure control,
• Cholesterol management, and
• Smoking cessation.

"The goal of the EvidenceNOW initiative is to give primary care practices the support they need to help patients live healthier and longer," said Secretary Burwell. "By targeting smaller practices, we have a unique opportunity to reduce cardiovascular risk factors for hundreds of thousands of patients, and learn what kind of support results in better patient outcomes."

In addition, an eighth awardee will receive a grant to conduct an independent external evaluation of the overall EvidenceNOW initiative. The evaluation team will study the impact of the EvidenceNOW interventions on practice improvement and the delivery of cardiovascular care. The evaluation team will also study which practice supports and quality improvement strategies are most effective in improving the implementation of new evidence. The seven implementation grants will run for three years, and the evaluation grant for four years.

Together, these grants represent one of the largest research investments to date by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. Funding for this initiative comes from the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Trust Fund created by the Affordable Care Act.

Provided by Group Health Research Institute