ACC CEO Search Underway

The ACC has selected Korn/Ferry International, a leading global executive recruitment and talent management firm, to work alongside a search committee tasked with selecting the College’s next chief executive officer. The search is now underway and should be completed by late summer. The ACC search committee consists of eight ACC member leaders. Working with Korn Ferry, the committee will solicit input from an array of stakeholders, including members of the ACC’s Board of Trustees, the Board of Governors, past presidents, council chairs, next generation leaders and staff.

“The ACC has a strong mission and vision to guide us in transforming cardiovascular care and improving heart health,” said ACC President C. Michael Valentine, MD, FACC. “We are looking for a CEO who shares in the goals of the College and is passionate about working side-by-side with its staff and members to realize and move forward with our vision and new strategic plan.”

Tom Giella (Tom.Giella@kornferry.com) and Lorraine Lavet (Lorraine.Lavet@kornferry.com) are leading the search. All interested candidates should contact them directly.

"The ACC has a strong mission and vision to guide us in transforming cardiovascular care and improving heart health. We are looking for a CEO who shares in the goals of the College and is passionate about working side-by-side with its staff and members to realize and move forward with our vision and new strategic plan." — ACC President C. Michael Valentine, MD, FACC

ACC’s previous CEO, Shalom Jacobovitz left the College in February 2017 to head up a new biopharmaceutical company after serving in his role for nearly five years. The College is currently operating under the leadership of Interim Chief Executive Officer and Executive Vice President Cathy Gates.

New Online Home for ACC Accreditation Services

Information on ACC Accreditation Services can now be found on the College’s Quality Improvement for Institutions website – the online hub for all ACC tools and resources for hospitals, health systems and other institutions, including NCDR registries and national quality campaigns.

In addition to its new “home,” ACC Accreditation Services content was redesigned to enhance navigation and streamline information. Users may experience slight delays in accessing content throughout the month of April while final touches are made to the site.

NCDR Research Roundup

STS/ACC TVT Registry: Patients with severe mitral stenosis (MS) undergoing TAVR may have an increased risk of adverse outcomes, including mortality after one year, when compared with patients who do not have MS or whose MS is nonsevere, according to a study published April 2 in JACC: Cardiovascular Interventions.

A separate study published March 19 in JACC: Cardiovascular Interventions, suggests a clinical risk model for 30-day death after TAVR may allow for benchmarking, quality assessment and comparison of short-term mortality across centers as TAVR expands to lower-risk patients and less experienced sites.

IMPACT Registry: There may be significant hospital-level variations in pediatric balloon aortic valvuloplasty and balloon pulmonary valvuloplasty that cannot be explained by patient- and procedure-level characteristics, according to research published March 19 in JACC: Cardiovascular Interventions.

Get the details on these studies and more in the Latest in Cardiology section of ACC.org. Simply search for “NCDR Research.”

Now on PubMed

JACC: Clinical Electrophysiology has been accepted for full indexing in PubMed, a free, online archive powered by the National Institutes of Health’s National Library of Medicine. The database comprises more than 28 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals and online books. A testament to the journal’s quality and value within the electrophysiology specialty and the larger medical community, the announcement is a direct reflection on the journal’s editor, reviewers, and authors. The journal archives will be fully available on the PubMed website when the indexing process is completed in the coming weeks.

JACC: Basic to Translational Science also recently gained acceptance for full indexing in PubMed Central, a free archive for full-text biomedical and life sciences journal articles, and a digital counterpart to the National Library of Medicine journal citation database’s extensive print journal collection.

JACC, JACC: Cardiovascular Interventions, JACC: Cardiovascular Imaging and JACC: Heart Failure are already fully indexed on PubMed. With these latest announcements, research published across the entire family of JACC Journals is now fully accessible to clinicians and researchers through these valuable indexing tools.

Help For Hospitals Looking to Reduce Readmissions Risks for AMI, HF Patients?

Implementation of ACC’s Patient Navigator Program may lead to substantial improvements in the number of hospitals that prospectively identify and assess readmission risk for patients with acute myocardial infraction (AMI) and heart failure (HF), according to a poster presented April 7 at the 2018 Quality of Care and Outcomes Research Scientific Sessions in Arlington, VA.

Tyler J. Gluckman, MD, FACC

Tyler J. Gluckman, MD, FACC, et al., analyzed rates of pre-discharge identification and readmission risk assessment for AMI and HF patients who were hospitalized at 35 hospitals that participated in the Patient Navigator Program between 2015 and 2017. All participating hospitals were members of ACC’s ACTION Registry.

By the end of the study period, 32 hospitals identified AMI patients at risk of readmission before discharge, compared with 24 hospitals at baseline. The number of hospitals identifying HF patients at risk of readmission increased to 34, up from 27 at baseline. At the beginning of the study, nine hospitals assessed readmission risk for AMI patients and 11 hospitals did so for HF patients. After two years, the number of hospitals that completed readmission risk assessments increased to 28 for AMI patients and 30 for HF patients.

The researchers conclude that while the Patient Navigator Program led to improvements in identifying and assessing readmission risk for AMI and HF patients, future research is needed to determine whether the improvements led to reductions in 30-day readmissions or other outcome measures.

New Cardiac Rehab Performance and Quality Measures

A comprehensive set of performance and quality measures for patients who are eligible to participate in cardiac rehabilitation (rehab) were released by the ACC and American Heart Association, in collaboration with the American Association of Cardiovascular and Pulmonary Rehabilitation, on March 29 in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. The new measure set includes six performance measures and three quality measures, and updates the original measure set released in 2007 and the 2010 focused update. They build upon recent evidence-based clinical practice guidelines and scientific statements, and include feedback from peer review and public comments.

ACC Around the World

CathPCI Registry in Saudi Arabia: The ACC and the Saudi Arabian Cardiac Interventional Society have partnered to implement ACC’s CathPCI Registry in hospitals across Saudi Arabia, becoming the first country-wide, NCDR-based, quality improvement initiative project in the Middle East. As part of ACC’s Saudi Arabia Chapter – one of the largest ACC international chapters with 141 members – the Saudi Arabian Cardiac Interventional Society aims to work with the ACC to foster a culture of quality improvement in Saudi Arabian hospitals. “Through this collaborative effort, the society hopes to standardize the level of care for coronary, structural and peripheral procedures to meet international benchmarks for safety and quality of care,” said Mirvat Alasnag, MB BCh, international liaison for the Saudi Arabian Cardiac Interventional Society.

Best of ACC in China: “ACC in China,” a high-end academic exchange platform jointly initiated by the ACC and Bayer HealthCare Limited, will provide Chinese cardiovascular doctors with up-to-date information on the latest ACC Annual Scientific Session (ACC.18) and promote in-depth communication between Chinese and American physicians. This year marks the 15th anniversary of “ACC in China,” with the goal of reaching more than 50 hospitals across China from now and throughout May.

Save These Dates: The ACC has officially announced the dates for its 2018 ACC International Conferences, where international and regional faculty partner to deliver an educational experience with the unique perspective of clinical practice within a region. Learn more about this year’s Middle East Conference, Oct. 25 – 27 in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia; Latin America Conference, Nov. 16 – 17 in Lima, Peru; and Asia Conference, Nov. 30 – Dec. 2 in Shanghai, China, at ACC.org/International. Registration opens soon.