Recipes for Success in NC: Transforming Care for the Future

(article featured in ACC's Board of Governors Update)

This year, our chapter received the Transformation in Care award from the BOG for our state's pilot study for free Plavix and statins. "Improving Cardiovascular Care in NC Free and Charitable Clinics" is a $25,000 monitored grant from the NC Chapter ACC to the NC Free Clinics for provision of medications with follow-up compliance and outcomes over one year's time. This 2016 pilot study will enable seven free and charitable clinics in NC to provide clopidogrel and statin medications for their patients for a period of one year. These clinics were chosen by the NC Free and Charitable Clinic Association because: a) they represent a diversity of geographic location and size, b) all have an electronic pharmacy records (which will enable tracking results) and c) all dispense medications on site. To determine the success of this program, the NC Free Clinic Association will track various outcomes and measures with monthly reports to the NC Chapter. We are incredible proud of this program that we adopted back in 2015 at our fall Chapter meeting.

You may have heard of our RACE program, now nearing its 13th anniversary. We have seen continued success of NC RACE program for the oldest truly statewide system of STEMI care and it is hard to believe it has been a decade since we embarked on this program. If you don't know much about RACE – here are the details: the Regional Approach to Cardiovascular Emergencies (RACE) project is a North Carolina statewide system for providing rapid coordinated care of cardiovascular emergencies. Established in 2003, the RACE system incorporates quality improvement efforts of over 119 hospitals, 540 emergency medical agencies and thousands of health care providers working in a coordinated manner to provide timely and lifesaving care. Initially, the RACE system was developed to treat acute myocardial infarction. With an eventual goal to rapidly coordinate the treatment of all cardiovascular emergencies, our current phase called RACE CARS (Cardiac Arrest Resuscitation System) is focusing on out of hospital cardiac arrest. The recommendations of this project are based upon established guidelines, published data, and the knowledge and experience of numerous individuals specializing in acute myocardial infarction care. You can read more about RACE on the NC Chapter website.

We are also working to promote wider adoption of ACC's NCDR® and will soon survey NC Chapter members across the state regarding their participation in the registries. The survey will also gauge member willingness to consider doing a statewide NCDR data review as a blinded comparator for their own programs. I look forward to the results of the survey and further promoting ACC's NCDR.