Healthcare systems collaborating to implement a shared decision-making tool in the electronic health record and build evidence on its adoption and use.

Introduction: Shared decision-making (SDM) is a method of care by which patients and clinicians work together to co-create a plan of care. Electronic health record (EHR) integration of SDM tools may increase adoption of SDM. We conducted a "lightweight" integration of a freely available electronic SDM tool, CV Prevention Choice, within the EHRs of three healthcare systems. Here, we report how the healthcare systems collaborated to achieve integration. Methods: This work was conducted as part of a stepped wedge randomized pragmatic trial. CV Prevention Choice was developed using guidelines for HTML5-based web applications. Healthcare systems integrated the tool in their EHR using documentation the study team developed and refined with lessons learned after each system integrated the electronic SDM tool into their EHR. CV Prevention Choice integration populates the tool with individual patient data locally without sending protected health information between the EHR and the web. Data abstraction and secure transfer systems were developed to manage data collection to assess tool implementation and effectiveness outcomes. Results: Time to integrate CV Prevention Choice in the EHR was 12.1 weeks for the first system, 10.4 weeks for the second, and 9.7 weeks for the third. One system required two 1-hour meetings with study team members and two healthcare systems required a single 1-hour meeting. Healthcare system information technology teams collaborated by sharing information and offering improvements to documentation. Challenges included tracking CV Prevention Choice use for reporting and capture of combination medications. Data abstraction required refinements to address differences in how each healthcare system captured data elements. Conclusion: Targeted documentation on tool features and resource mapping supported collaboration of IT teams across healthcare systems, enabling them to integrate a web-based SDM tool with little additional research team effort or oversight. Their collaboration helped overcome difficulties integrating the web application and address challenges to data harmonization for trial outcome analyses.

The design and development of an encounter tool to support shared decision making about preventing cardiovascular events.

Patients at high risk for cardiovascular disease (CVD) tend to receive less intensive preventive care. Clinical practice guidelines recommend shared decision making (SDM) to improve the quality of primary CVD prevention. There are tools for use during the clinical encounter that promote SDM, but, to our knowledge, there are no SDM encounter tools that support conversations about available lifestyle and pharmacological options that can lead to preventive care that is congruent with patient goals and CVD risk. Using the best available evidence and human-centered design (iterative design in the context of ultimate use with users), our team developed a SDM encounter tool, CV Prevention Choice. Each subsequent version during the iterative development process was evaluated in terms of content, usefulness, and usability by testing it in real preventive encounters. The final version of the tool includes a calculator that estimates the patient's risk of a major atherosclerotic CVD event in the next 10 years. Lifestyle and medication options are presented, alongside their pros, cons, costs, and other burdens. The risk reduction achieved by the selected prevention program is then displayed to support collaborative deliberation and decision making. A U.S. multicenter trial is estimating the effectiveness of CV Prevention Choice in achieving risk-concordant CV prevention while identifying the best strategies for increasing the adoption of the SDM encounter tool and its routine use in practice.

Increasing risk-concordant cardiovascular care in diverse health systems: a mixed methods pragmatic stepped wedge cluster randomized implementation trial of shared decision making (SDM4IP).

BACKGROUND: The primary prevention of cardiovascular (CV) events is often less intense in persons at higher CV risk and vice versa. Clinical practice guidelines recommend that clinicians and patients use shared decision making (SDM) to arrive at an effective and feasible prevention plan that is congruent with each person's CV risk and informed preferences. However, SDM does not routinely happen in practice. This study aims to integrate into routine care an SDM decision tool (CV PREVENTION CHOICE) at three diverse healthcare systems in the USA and study strategies that foster its adoption and routine use. METHODS: This is a mixed method, hybrid type III stepped wedge cluster randomized study to estimate (a) the effectiveness of implementation strategies on SDM uptake and utilization and (b) the extent to which SDM results in prevention plans that are risk-congruent. Formative evaluation methods, including clinician and stakeholder interviews and surveys, will identify factors likely to impact feasibility, acceptability, and adoption of CV PREVENTION CHOICE as well as normalization of CV PREVENTION CHOICE in routine care. Implementation facilitation will be used to tailor implementation strategies to local needs, and implementation strategies will be systematically adjusted and tracked for assessment and refinement. Electronic health record data will be used to assess implementation and effectiveness outcomes, including CV PREVENTION CHOICE reach, adoption, implementation, maintenance, and effectiveness (measured as risk-concordant care plans). A sample of video-recorded clinical encounters and patient surveys will be used to assess fidelity. The study employs three theoretical approaches: a determinant framework that calls attention to categories of factors that may foster or inhibit implementation outcomes (the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research), an implementation theory that guides explanation or understanding of causal influences on implementation outcomes (Normalization Process Theory), and an evaluation framework (RE-AIM). DISCUSSION: By the project's end, we expect to have (a) identified the most effective implementation strategies to embed SDM in routine practice and (b) estimated the effectiveness of SDM to achieve feasible and risk-concordant CV prevention in primary care. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT04450914 . Posted June 30, 2020 TRIAL STATUS: This study received ethics approval on April 17, 2020. The current trial protocol is version 2 (approved February 17, 2021). The first subject had not yet been enrolled at the time of submission.

Coronary artery calcification in black women and white women.

BACKGROUND: Coronary calcification is a potent independent predictor of coronary risk. Sex-specific risk categories based on calcium scores have been established, but ethnic differences in coronary calcification have been little studied. This prospective cohort study compares coronary calcification, assessed by computed tomography, in postmenopausal black women and white women. METHODS AND RESULTS: Computed tomographic scans were performed on 128 black women and 733 white women without known coronary artery disease (mean age 63 +/- 8 years). Although coronary risk factors were more prevalent among black women (P <.0001), total calcium scores were similar to those in white women. By use of the Framingham algorithm, higher calcium scores were associated with higher 10-year risk of myocardial infarction or coronary death. In multiple regression analysis, age was independently associated with higher calcium scores in both ethnic groups (P =.002 for black women, P <.0001 for white women). Diabetes mellitus and not exercising at least 3 times per week were independently associated with higher calcium scores in white women but not black women. Educational level, body mass index, current hormone replacement therapy, hysterectomy, dietary fat consumption, family history of premature coronary disease, hypertension, self-reported high cholesterol, and current smoking were not independently associated with coronary calcium score in black women, white women, or the combined cohort; neither was ethnicity an independent predictor of coronary calcification. CONCLUSIONS: Despite higher dietary fat consumption, higher body mass index, and greater prevalence of hypertension, diabetes, and smoking, black women had coronary calcium scores similar to those of white women. Ethnicity was not an independent predictor of coronary calcification.

Sustained reduction of in-stent neointimal growth with the use of a novel systemic nanoparticle paclitaxel.

BACKGROUND: Paclitaxel (PXL)-eluting stents in animals cause incomplete healing and, in some instances, a lack of sustained suppression of neointimal growth. The present study tested the efficacy of a novel systemic delivery nanoparticle PXL for reducing in-stent restenosis. METHODS AND RESULTS: A saline-reconstituted formulation of PXL stabilized by albumin nanoparticles (nPXL) was tested in 38 New Zealand White rabbits receiving bilateral iliac artery stents. Doses of nPXL (1.0 to 5.0 mg/kg) were administered as a 10-minute intra-arterial infusion; control animals received vehicle (0.9% normal saline). In a follow-up chronic experiment, nPXL 5.0 mg/kg was given at stenting with or without an intravenous 3.5-mg/kg repeat nPXL dose at 28 days; these studies were terminated at 3 months. At 28 days, mean neointimal thickness was reduced (P< or =0.02) by doses of nPXL > or =2.5 mg/kg with evidence of delayed healing. The efficacy of a single dose of nPXL 5.0 mg/kg, however, was lost by 90 days. In contrast, a second repeat dose of nPXL 3.5 mg/kg given 28 days after stenting resulted in sustained suppression of neointimal thickness at 90 days (P< or =0.009 versus single dose nPXL 5.0 mg/kg and controls) with nearly complete neointimal healing. CONCLUSIONS: Although systemic nPXL reduces neointimal growth at 28 days, a single repeat dose was required for sustained neointimal suppression. Thus, this novel systemic formulation of PXL may allow adjustment of dose at the stent treatment site and prove to be a useful adjunct for the clinical prevention of in-stent restenosis.

Advancing Antithrombin Therapy in Acute Myocardial Infarction Management: Low Molecular Weight Heparins Plus Fibrinolysis.

Unfractionated heparin (UFH) has been traditionally used as an antithrombotic agent following fibrinolytic therapy for acute myocardial infarction. However, UFH has pharmacokinetic, biophysical, and biological limitations. Although early infarct artery patency has been superior with UFH as compared with placebo, aggregate data has demonstrated only a modest reduction in clinical events. Low molecular weight heparins (LMWHs) are attractive as potential adjunctive therapy to thrombolysis because of their greater bioavailabilty and ease of administration compared with UFH. Initial small trials with LMWHs have demonstrated their apparent safety when used in combination with thrombolytic agents, and a trend toward higher infarct-related artery patency rates. The clinical efficacy of LMWHs compared with UFH is currently being addressed in large-scale randomized clinical trials.