Lorraine Oldridge
National Cardiovascular Intelligence Network (NCVIN), Public Health England
A nation-wide audit will help primary care to understand how many patients they have with high-risk conditions such as high blood pressure, atrial fibrillation and high cholesterol or existing cardiovascular disease, who are potentially undiagnosed, under- or over-treated.
Preventing 150,000 strokes and heart attacks
The audit (CVDPREVENT) will see NHS England & Improvement, NHS Digital and Public Health England (PHE) working together to provide new national cardiovascular data to underpin quality improvement initiatives in primary care.
It will support both the NHS Long Term Plan ambition to prevent 150,000 strokes and heart attacks over the next ten years, and the CVD prevention element of the upcoming Directly Enhanced Service specification in 2021/22.
While individuals will not be identifiable from the data, the collection of record-level data on demographics, ethnicity and gender will allow the assessment of the impact of quality improvement on health inequalities.
Highlight gaps, identify inequalities
CVDPREVENT will provide a foundation for professionally-led quality improvement, in individual GP practices across Primary Care Networks (PCNs). It will provide data to highlight gaps, identify inequalities and monitor improvement and impact on inequalities, as well as enabling and guiding opportunities for improvement.
The audit will extract information, that is already routinely collected in primary care, without any additional burden to GP practices. Data will be extracted for individuals who either have existing cardiovascular disease or who have one or more of the following six high-risk conditions: atrial fibrillation, high blood pressure, diabetes, non-diabetic hyperglycaemia, chronic kidney disease, familial hypercholesterolaemia and other hyperlipidaemias. It will also extract data for individuals with an entry in their record that may suggest that they have an undiagnosed high-risk condition.
Addressing health inequalities
While individuals will not be identifiable from the data, the collection of record-level data on demographics, ethnicity and gender will allow the assessment of the impact of quality improvement on health inequalities. This is particularly important as CVD contributes to the disparity in health outcomes between rich and poor, accounting for 25% of the total gap in life expectancy.
More information is available at: www.england.nhs.uk/ourwork/clinical-policy/cvd/cvdprevent
