Cardiovascular Disease Quick Screen module

CVD Quick Screen Module

Introduction

The CVD Quickscreen module calculates five year Cardiovascular Risk using only the minimal number of fields required by the Framingham equation. Because many of these fields are pre-populated by the patient management system record, a Cardiovascular Risk can usually be determined in seconds.

Background

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the leading cause of hospital admissions and mortality in New Zealand. It is recommended that decisions on prevention and treatment of cardiovascular disease are based on the likelihood of a person having a cardiovascular event over five years. These cardiovascular events include heart attack, angina, stroke, peripheral vascular disease and heart failure.

This means treatment in New Zealand is no longer focussed on individual risk factors but on a person’s absolute cardiovascular risk. The CVD risk can be estimated using information on age, gender, blood pressure, total and HDL cholesterol, smoking, and whether or not a person has diabetes. From the mid 1990s paper-based CVD risk charts have been available in New Zealand to estimate peoples’ risk of having a cardiovascular event over five years. However these may have been under-used so a programme to increase risk assessment and management using internet-based clinical decision support systems has been developed.

The BPAC Inc web-based Decision Support system calculates and displays a person’s absolute CVD risk then automatically saves it in a standard way to the patient’s medical record. This makes it superior to paper-based charts that can be interpreted in different ways, provide absolute cut-offs and require coding to a patients’ notes.

How it works

BPAC’s CVD Quickscreen uses data that is already in a patient’s medical record so the cardiovascular risk can usually be determined in seconds. It then automatically saves this in a standard way directly to the patient’s medical record.

Auto-population of data
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CVD Quickscreen uses data that is already in a patient’s medical record so the cardiovascular risk can usually be determined in seconds

At any time, users can hover the cursor over the info icon to get more information relevant to the adjacent field.

Summary saved to medical record
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A summary of the Quick CVD Risk assessment is saved to the patient’s medical record and is available to print out for the patient if required.

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