Heart of Virginia Healthcare

Cardiovascular Diseases

Cardiovascular Diseases, Primary Care

Most care for chronic conditions is provided by primary care clinicians. Although Virginia ranks 4th among the 50 states in average income, it ranks 27th in mortality due to heart attacks and strokes. The scope and focus of this project will materially improve the rates of screening and treatment of risk factors for heart attacks and strokes, and will give primary care clinicians the tools and training to improve the care of other chronic illnesses and the delivery of preventive services.

Restoring Primary Care in Virginia: Patient Centered Outcomes Research (PCOR) Learning as a Pathway to Value is an extension of the Virginia Center for Health Innovation's (VCHI) work to address primary care transformation in its Virginia Health Innovation Plan. VCHI, in partnership with four of Virginia's schools of medicine, the Virginia Center for Health Quality (VHQC), and evaluation specialists at George Mason University, will form the Virginia Primary Care Transformation Collaborative (VPCTC). They will use an evidence-based, comprehensive strategy to help up to 300 small-to-medium sized primary care practices: 1) accelerate incorporation of PCOR clinical and organizational findings into practice with an initial focus on cardiovascular health and the Aspirin, Blood Pressure, Cholesterol, and Smoking (ABCS); 2) increase their capacity to integrate new PCOR findings on an on-going basis; and 3) learn strategies that can help them sustain and revitalize their organizations while restoring the joy to primary care practice. Practice supports will include on-site coaching, expert consultation, collaborative learning events, an online support center, and data feedback and benchmarking. As a result of this project, Restoring Primary Care in Virginia, participating practices will develop stronger Quality Improvement (QI) capacity and learn strategies that can help them sustain and revitalize their organizations while restoring the joy to primary care practice. The value proposition to recruit and retain participating practices includes: Improved financial performance; improved clinician, staff, and patient satisfaction; objectively improved quality of care; improved ability to negotiate for and receive pay for performance bonuses, including Electronic Medical Record (EMR) meaningful use stage 2; completion of Part IV certification by the American Board of Family Medicine (ABFM) and American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) for QI work completed in this initiative; and engagement in a self-sustaining learning collaborative of similar practices after the end of the project. The evaluation plan is designed to answer these questions: (1) Did the VPCTC intervention improve the performance of small physician practices in Virginia as measured by the individual ABCS? (2) Which elements of the intervention were most important to the physicians for performance improvement? (3) Did maintenance or follow-up intervention activities add value or was the initial intense intervention enough to produce the measured impact? (4) Which internal contextual or structural features of practices at baseline are most likely to be associated with improved performance (e.g., expansive use of EMRs, degree of adaptive reserve or change processing capacity, number of physicians in the practice, etc.)? (5) Did the VPCTC improve the capacity of small physician practices to implement future PCOR findings and improve quality on an ongoing basis? (6) Which elements of the intervention were most important to the physicians for QI capacity building? Multivariate statistical modeling of clinical performance and survey data will be performed to answer questions 1, 3, and 4. Qualitative interviews, surveys and statistical analysis of survey results will answer questions 2, 5, and 6.