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Improving
Cardiovascular Care
Through Local Partnership Efforts:
The Guidelines Applied in Practice (GAP) Initiative
in Southeast Michigan
Satellite
Conference
Thursday, July 26, 2001
1:00-2:30 p.m. ET
Evaluate the conference
Read
a transcript of the conference
On
July 26th, hundreds of physicians, nurses, administrators
and other health care professionals participated in this important
conference at more than sixty sites across the country, including
the offices of Peer
Review Organizations (PROs), hospitals, medical schools
and Heart House, home of the American
College of Cardiology (ACC). This conference, co-sponsored
by the ACC and the Centers
for Medicare and Medicaid Services, (CMS, formerly the
Health Care Financing Administration) explored the opportunities
for collaboration between ACC members, the American
Heart Association (AHA) and the PROs. The main focus was
the successful Guidelines Applied in
Practice project that continues in southeast Michigan.
The
Conference was moderated by Harlan
Krumholz, M.D., F.A.C.C., a member of both the ACC and
the AHA, and a clinical coordinator for two of CMS's national
priority improvement projects. The conference began with brief
presentations by Stephen
Jencks, M.D., M.P.H., Douglas
Zipes, M.D., F.A.C.C. and Lynn
Smaha, M.D., PhD., F.A.C.C. Dr. Jencks, assistant surgeon
general and director of the quality improvement group at the
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, spoke about the
Peer Review Organizations, their role in quality improvement
for Medicare recipients, and emphasized the development of
relationships between the PROs and local provider. Dr. Zipes,
current president of the American College of Cardiology, spoke
about the history and the impetus behind the GAP
initiative and some of its similarities with AHA's Get
With the Guidelines project. He also called for cardiologists
to get involved with quality improvement initiatives nationally
and in their area; he announced that, to aid in this effort,
the ACC is creating a web-based Clearinghouse of quality improvement
information. Dr. Smaha, the immediate past president of the
American Heart Association, spoke in greater depth about Get
With the Guidelines and ways it could be combined with a GAP-style
approach.
The
centerpiece of the conference, however, was a presentation
by Kim Eagle, M.D., F.A.C.C.
and Cecelia Montoye,
R.N., M.S.N., C.P.H.Q., principal investigators for the
GAP Project on acute myocardial infarction in Michigan. Dr.
Eagle is the Albion Walter Hewlett Professor of Internal Medicine
and Chief of Clinical Cardiology at the University of Michigan
Medical Center. Ms. Montoye has been in nursing for more than
20 years and is the AMI Project Manager in CMS's 6th Scope
of Work. Click here for more
complete bios on each of the presenters.
The
final part of the conference was a live question-and-answer
session with the panel. Due to time, there were many callers
who did not have their questions answered. We hope to provide
answers to those questions here within the next week.
Check
back at this site in the next couple of weeks to see video
excerpts of the satellite conference and read a transcript
of the broadcast. If you were not provided with an evaluation
form when you viewed the conference, please download
one. The evaluation is an MS Word document that you can
complete, print and mail to Karen Kolb at the address listed
at the bottom of the form.
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