ACC, Novo Nordisk Partner to Improve Cardiovascular Disease Management in Patients with Type 2 Diabetes

New initiative will identify gaps in care, spur quality improvement in treating vulnerable patients

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Sep 10, 2020, 10:34 ET

WASHINGTON, Sept. 10, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- The American College of Cardiology, in partnership with Novo Nordisk Inc., is launching Transforming Cardiovascular Risk in Diabetes (TRANSFORM CVRiD), a new, two-year health care quality initiative to promote cardiovascular risk reduction and care for people with Type 2 diabetes. Cardiovascular disease is the No. 1 cause of death among patients with Type 2 diabetes.

"Patients with diabetes face a very high risk of developing cardiovascular disease and require individualized care involving multiple specialties and therapies to ensure they are receiving the best possible care," ACC President Athena Poppas, MD, FACC, said. "This initiative will be critical to achieving a progressive path forward in the management of cardiovascular risk in Type 2 diabetes."

Creating individualized management and prevention strategies for people with Type 2 diabetes has become increasingly complex, especially when physicians have to navigate new clinical guidelines, pathways and novel therapy choices. To address this, TRANSFORM CVRiD will use real-world data from the ACC/Veradigm PINNACLE Registry and Diabetes Collaborative Registry to identify patterns that lead to optimal care and develop tools and education to support clinicians whose patients match those criteria.

"Every physician treating someone with Type 2 diabetes wants to have the confidence that they're using the right medicine and applying the right guidelines at the right time. We have a great opportunity, based on our collective experience in diabetes and cardiovascular disease, to help health care professionals make evidence-based decisions to help their patients," said Anne Phillips, MD, Senior Vice President, Clinical Development, Medical and Regulatory Affairs for Novo Nordisk. "We're looking forward to learning through this research, alongside our ACC partners, and implementing a program that can help improve the quality of care for people with Type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease."

TRANSFORM-CVRiD is a quality improvement initiative involving a real-world population study that seeks to enable clinicians to better identify meaningful ways to improve quality of care. At the end of the program, researchers should be able to determine the rate of consistent guideline usage, compare sites on cardiovascular risk and treatment patterns with different classes of diabetes drugs and understand barriers to optimal care through qualitative best practices research.

To get there, researchers will examine data from an initial national study looking at people with atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease to assess their adherence to current ACC guidelines and clinical recommendations. The analysis will answer key questions on diabetes management and provide a population-level diabetes risk assessment.

After a baseline assessment, select regional clinician practices and hospitals will be identified to receive interventions to support the right treatment strategies matched to the right patients. These interventions include education, quality improvement strategies and resources and quality improvement tools, such as decision aids and checklists, delivered through ACC Quality Ambassadors.

This initiative is the latest under the TRANSFORM umbrella. ACC introduced TRANSFORM as a new kind of quality research program aimed to improve health care by transforming the quality of care across the multi-faceted areas of cardiovascular disease. TRANSFORM programs leverage clinical registry data to identify patient level treatment opportunities and pair them with office-based interventions, and partnerships to include the pharmaceutical and medical device industry, health plans, employers, clinicians and patients.

The American College of Cardiology envisions a world where innovation and knowledge optimize cardiovascular care and outcomes. As the professional home for the entire cardiovascular care team, the mission of the College and its 54,000 members is to transform cardiovascular care and to improve heart health. The ACC bestows credentials upon cardiovascular professionals who meet stringent qualifications and leads in the formation of health policy, standards and guidelines. The College also provides professional medical education, disseminates cardiovascular research through its world-renowned JACC Journals, operates national registries to measure and improve care, and offers cardiovascular accreditation to hospitals and institutions. For more, visit acc.org.

About Novo Nordisk

Novo Nordisk is a global healthcare company that's been making innovative medicines to help people with diabetes lead longer, healthier lives for 95 years. This heritage has given us experience and capabilities that also enable us to help people defeat other serious diseases including obesity, hemophilia and growth disorders. We remain steadfast in our conviction that the formula for lasting success is to stay focused, think long-term and do business in a financially, socially and environmentally responsible way. With U.S. headquarters in New Jersey and production and research facilities in six states, Novo Nordisk employs nearly 6,000 people throughout the country. For more information, visit novonordisk.us, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

SOURCE American College of Cardiology