Impact of Best Practice Alerts in Cardiology Outpatient Clinics

Impact of Best Practice Alerts in Cardiology Outpatient Clinics

This quality improvement intervention seeks to implement two Best Practice Alerts (BPAs) for use in cardiology clinics while simultaneously evaluating the impact of each BPA- one for patients with uncontrolled blood pressure and one for patients with atrial fibrillation not on anticoagulation.

Best Practice Alerts based will be created for hypertension and atrial fibrillation. Outpatient cardiology providers will be randomly allocated into one of three groups. The first group will receive the BPA for hypertension alone. The second group will receive the BPA for atrial fibrillation alone. The final group will receive both BPAs. The rate of blood pressure control for all patients and anticoagulation in patients with atrial fibrillation in each group will be evaluated prior to and after the implementation of the BPAs to determine the effect of the BPA.

Inclusion Criteria:

• all patients seen routinely by cardiologists at Duke

Exclusion Criteria:

• none