Impact on cardiovascular health results of the introduction of the clinical governance contract into primary care in Tarragona

Abstract

Objective. The objectives of this study are: 1) to determine the improvement in the cardiovascular health of the population after the introduction of the clinical governance contract for primary care team professionals in Tarragona-Reus and the Terres de l'Ebre area (Tarragona province, Spain); 2) to identify the factors predictive of better cardiovascular health after the introduction of the clinical governance contract. The introduction of the clinical governance contract, which is based on professional leadership, feed-back of care information, and monitoring of indicators of cardiovascular risk based on scientific evidence and concretised in clinical practice guidelines, will improve the cardiovascular health results of the reference population. Improvements in indicators of procedure and result are specified in "Material and methods." Design. This is a before-and-after, multicentre study. Setting. Primary health care. Participants. Tirty health centres (all the primary care Centres in the area). Main measurements. Characteristics of the centre. Variables in procedures: indicators of good care practice, calculation of cardiovascular risk, application of clinical practice guidelines (hypertension, diabetes, lipaemia, tobacco and cardiovascular risk) and quality standards for drug prescription. Result variables: cardiovascular risk figures, number of ongoing care visits, hospital emergencies and admissions for angina, heart attack or stroke, and risk factor screenings of the population. Discussion. This study is useful, in that clinical governance aims to be a dynamic device to bring professionals into the leadership of health care management and, through monitoring indicators and feeding the findings back to the professionals, to improve health care quality. The study aims to show that management strategy can improve the population's cardiovascular health. The originality of the study lies in the development of a new tool of evaluation based on a novel management strategy for measuring cardiovascular health findings.