Dissemination of the Cardiovascular Risk Service
Dissemination of the Cardiovascular Risk Service
The objective of this study is to evaluate the implementation of of a remote, pharmacist-led
 cardiovascular risk service (CVRS) in 12 large, organizationally and culturally diverse
 hospitals and health-systems, many with high proportions of minority and underserved
 patients.
Cardiovascular disease (CVD) causes 2,200 deaths in Americans every day with one death every
 39 seconds. Yet effective implementation of research-based interventions that reduce
 CVD-related illness and death remains a substantial challenge. The objective of this study is
 to test the scalability of a pharmacist-led, remote CVD risk and prevention services model in
 large, organizationally and culturally diverse hospitals and health-systems, many with high
 proportions of minority and underserved patients, using a pragmatic cluster-randomized
 design. This service is called the Cardiovascular Risk Service (CVRS). There are limited data
 on the barriers and facilitators of implementation to enhance the CVRS in these types of
 diverse, complex health-systems. Therefore, scaling up our effective, innovative team-based
 intervention will require an assessment of barriers and facilitators to CVRS adoption,
 implementation, and maintenance. Our central hypothesis is that barriers and facilitators to
 CVRS implementation will vary across diverse primary care offices. We will use mixed methods
 including interviews, observations, and an innovative physician-pharmacist collaboration
 survey we developed to predict implementation of pharmacy-based services. The rationale for
 this proposed study is that overcoming barriers to implementation of a novel strategy to
 improve secondary prevention of CVD will lead to innovative strategies for broader adoption
 by health systems throughout the US.
Inclusion Criteria:

 -  Clinical Staff Subjects:

 -  Must be a current clinic or pharmacy service employee who works as a provider,
 pharmacist, nurse, clerk or administrator

 -  Patient Subjects:

 -  English or Spanish speaking

 -  Seen in the clinic at least once in the previous 12 months

 -  Currently has one of the following diseases:

 1. Diabetes with HA1c 9.0% or greater and/or

 2. Hypertension (uncomplicated) with systolic blood pressure 150 mm Hg or
 greater

 -  Informal Caregiver Subjects:

 -  Person identified by the patient subject who assists the patient subject with
 activities of daily living or other aspects of the patient subject's healthcare

 Exclusion Criteria:

 -  Study wide exclusions:

 -  Inability to give consent

 -  Nursing home residence

 -  No telephone

 -  Additional patient subject exclusions:

 -  Cancer with a life expectancy less than 24 months

 -  Pregnancy

 -  Diagnosis of dementia

 -  Plans to terminate care from the clinic within 24 months