EvidenceNOW: Advancing Heart Health in Primary Care
Project Summary
Goals
The goals of EvidenceNOW are ambitious and include--
- Helping primary care practices implement evidence to improve the quality of heart health care
- Helping practices identify ways to build their capacity to receive and incorporate other patient-centered outcomes research findings in the future
- Studying how external quality improvement support helps primary care practices improve the way they work and the health of their patients
- Building and disseminating a blueprint of what works to improve primary care
Where is EvidenceNOW Taking Place?
EvidenceNOW created 7 regional cooperatives working with more than 1,500 primary care practices across 12 States, with 5,000 primary care providers serving 8 million Americans.
The 7 cooperatives have developed unique interventions that are tailored to their region and the populations they serve and are designed to improve the delivery of cardiovascular care, including the ABCS: Aspirin use by high-risk individuals, Blood pressure control, Cholesterol management, and Smoking cessation.
- The 7 cooperatives have developed unique interventions that are tailored to their region and the populations they serve and are designed to improve the delivery of cardiovascular care, including the ABCS: Aspirin use by high-risk individuals, Blood pressure control, Cholesterol management, and Smoking cessation.On-site practice facilitation and coaching
- Data feedback and benchmarking
- Health information technology support
- Shared learning collaboratives or peer-to-peer learning
- Expert consultation
How Will EvidenceNOW Measure Success?
At the local level, each EvidenceNOW cooperative will evaluate its own interventions for improving the delivery of the ABCS of heart health and the capacity of practices. Our goal is that each of these practices will meet the national target of 70 percent of all patients adopting the ABCS of heart disease prevention. These regional efforts will provide a rich and multifaceted understanding of how to help primary care practices build capacity for ongoing learning and improvement.
In addition, the 7 regional cooperatives are gathering data that are common and harmonized across projects. This means that at the national level, the independent evaluation team has the ability to examine and compare the effectiveness of interventions and to determine which interventions are most effective in improving the implementation of new medical evidence in which contexts and under what circumstances. The national evaluation team also is studying a number of other targeted questions that will provide useful information about the infrastructure and supports that are needed at the practice, regional, and national levels to successfully translate evidence into better care.
How EvidenceNOW Promotes Learning Health System Capabilities
EvidenceNOW is helping small-to medium-sized primary care practices identify and use the latest available evidence. It is helping them to learn how to extract data from their electronic health records and use it for quality improvement. Finally, it is helping practices learn how to take external and internal knowledge and implement it in practice on an ongoing basis.
For More Information
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