Public Health and Primary Care Partner in South Carolina to Address Cardiovascular Health

The public health and primary care partnership focuses on promoting a wide variety of strategies to improve care and health, as well as to minimize cardiovascular disease costs in the state, including

• Promoting a healthy lifestyle through improved nutrition and physical activity
• Encouraging innovation in care delivery
• Emphasizing the ABCS (i.e., aspirin, blood pressure, cholesterol, and smoking)
• Encouraging primary care practices to adopt evidence-based medicine
• Increasing blood pressure and cholesterol control
• Increasing the number of hypertension specialists
• Increasing detection and treatment of tobacco dependence
• Using evidence-based patient assessment and learning tools
• Creating audit and feedback reports
• Identifying barriers to evidence-based practice

This partnership made great progress between 2000 and 2011 in improving two important risk-determining factors for cardiovascular health—blood pressure control and LDL control:

• Among patients with high blood pressure, hypertension control increased from 48% to 73%
• Among patients with high cholesterol, LDL control increased from 32% to 53%
• Among patients with both high blood pressure and high cholesterol
  • Hypertension control improved from 48% to 75%
  • LDL control improved from 33% to 55%
  • Hypertension and LDL control improved from 17% to 43%

South Carolina saved 7,750 lives by reducing the number of cardiovascular deaths by more than 3% every year from 1995 through 2008, more than any other state in the stroke belt.

The partnership members learned that trust enables success. Outpatient Quality Improvement Network strives to keep patients’ needs at the forefront and create opportunities for providers to participate in quality improvement and research. A successful partnership can yield long-term improvement in primary care by establishing an innovative, comprehensive, and sustainable model that produces better care and better health at lower cost for patients. This model can be replicated in other states and for any chronic disease.