Dr Peter Green
CVDPREVENT Workstream 3 Clinical Lead, NHS Benchmarking Network
Understanding how demographic factors impact the risk of cardiovascular disease will be key to supporting primary care healthcare professionals achieve better outcomes for all.
Hypertension is a leading risk factor for premature death. Termed a ‘silent killer’, the World Health Organization regards hypertension as a public health problem. Primary care is key to early identification and treatment of high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk conditions such as atrial fibrillation, cholesterol, chronic kidney disease and diabetes.
Termed a ‘silent killer’, the World Health Organization regards hypertension as a public health problem.
Filling the data gaps
The CVDPREVENT audit will help to tackle CVD prevention by enabling primary care to work with patients to achieve better outcomes. It is recognised that there are multiple and competing pressures in primary care, especially regarding cardiovascular and population health.
The audit will help target improvement efforts to make the greatest impact by identifying groups of patients who could benefit most from better management of their conditions. The audit results will highlight where particular groups with conditions outlined are falling through the net by asking the following questions:
- Are people with high-risk conditions being identified?
- Are people with high-risk conditions being diagnosed?
- Are people with high-risk conditions/CVD being managed to guidance?
- Are high-risk conditions/CVD being over-treated?
A key part of the analysis will be insight into how demographic factors play into the diagnosis and treatment of patients at risk of CVD. Data will be profiled by age, sex, deprivation and ethnicity to highlight with more precision where quality improvement efforts should be targeted to help reduce health inequalities.
A collaborative response to CVD prevention
With insights covering a range of health inequalities analysis, primary care will have the tools at their fingertips to put the pieces of the jigsaw together for a comprehensive and collaborative response to CVD prevention. This will go some way to supporting programmes such as the Academic Health Science Network’s (AHSNs) familial hypercholesterolemia child screening programme and many others.
Keep your eyes peeled for the first set of outputs from the CVDPREVENT audit later this year. You can also keep up to speed with #CVDPREVENT or follow our progress on the CVDPREVENT webpage.
