Just in time for American Heart Month, our quality improvement specialists curated their favorite resources to help support you, your teams, and your patients as you focus on promoting cardiovascular health.
CDC Resources for Health Care Professionals
The CDC’s Resources for Professional’s page addresses the many aspects of cardiac care and offers toolkits to boost health promotion messaging and interactive educational materials to engage in a heart-healthy lifestyle.
Find valuable resources to empower patients and encourage self-efficacy in blood pressure control through self-managed blood pressure (SMBP). Various best practice guides and multiple success stories demonstrate how interdisciplinary collaborations across the healthcare continuum complemented by strong community partnerships can drive significant improvements in patient care.
Here are our top 5 hypertension control resources:
- Hypertension Control Change Package, Second Edition
- Self-Management Support and Education
- Self-Measured Blood Pressure Monitoring With Clinical Support
- Best Practices for Cardiovascular Disease Prevention Program
- Integrating Community Health Workers on Clinical Care Teams and in the Community
Million Hearts® Campaign
The Million Hearts® website is another hub of resources.
Make sure to visit the section about Cardiac Rehabilitation: a comprehensive multidisciplinary approach that drives improvements in clinical outcomes, especially among patients at the highest risk for further cardiovascular complications.
Use the Cardiac Rehabilitation Change Package (CRCP) to help guide your quality improvement initiatives centered on raising awareness, bolstering referrals, and promoting the use of cardiac rehabilitation within your practice setting, across your networks, and community partnerships.
Cardiac rehab (CR) encompasses 36 one-hour– sessions of physical or occupational therapy sessions, medical nutrition therapy, and behavioral health services to address the psychosocial factors of chronic disease. Use these strategies to help connect the 90% of eligible patients that are not accessing vital cardiac rehabilitation services due to lack of timely referrals.
Unfortunately, although CR has been shown to reduce hospital readmissions and help save thousands of dollars in healthcare expenditures, it is a grossly underutilized secondary prevention program.
We encourage you to learn more and engage with other industry movers and subject matter experts by joining the Cardiac Rehab Collaborative (CRC).