3 Clinical Trials for Various Conditions
The VA has committed to disseminate a web-based Healthy Living Assessment(HLA) tool and use it as the cornerstone of a personalized prevention plan to engage patients to improve their health behaviors that lead to high health risk. Health risk assessments done in isolation, however, do not generally lead to behavior change. Our study will test the effectiveness of a Shared Decision Making intervention designed to activate Veterans to enroll in effective prevention programs. The intervention will be conducted over the telephone, by a prevention coach, and will be linked to the patients' primary care team. The co-primary outcomes will be patient activation and patient enrollment in prevention programs; 10-year risk of major cardiac events will also be measured.
The objective of this study is to explore the relationship between the ClearView scan results and a variety of cardiovascular risk indicators such as the Coronary Calcium Score, Framingham Risk Factors, Reynolds Risk Score, and biomarkers of inflammation. The ClearView device is a bio-electrographic tool that may assist medical professionals in rapid assessment of the systemic origin of the patient's presenting symptom(s). The ClearView is a potentially valuable resource that may benefit a physician's office by offering expedited differentiation capabilities. The subsequent results have the potential to include more data that would allow rapid patient diagnosis, triage, and treatment; optimized precious resource expenditure (nursing, physician, etc.); lower costs to facility, patient and insurance company; and decreased office wait time.
This project seeks to improve health care outcomes in complex patients with cardiovascular disease (CVD) or who are at high risk for developing CVD by promoting patient self-management. This will be accomplished in 4 diverse, large primary care practices through the following 3 aims: (1) develop a patient-specific, active component to an existing electronic PHR directed towards patients with complex illnesses that is designed to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease, (2) conduct a randomized controlled trial of the effectiveness of passive and active PHRs for improving adherence and clinical outcomes of complex patients in an ambulatory environment, and (3) enumerate the barriers and facilitators to implementation and use of an PHR among providers and patients in an ambulatory setting. To accomplish the aim 1, a users group will be assembled to determine which potential features of an 'active PHR' would be most acceptable and useful to them. To accomplish the 2nd aim, 1,000 patients with complex chronic disease leading to increased cardiovascular risk (i.e., CVD or 2 of the 4 conditions of hypertension (HTN), diabetes mellitus (DM), or hyperlipidemia requiring at least one medication for control) will be randomized to a passive PHR (n=500), or an active PHR (n=500) at 4 sites where the PHR currently is installed and in use. Outcomes to be assessed include improvement in control of risk factors (e.g., blood pressure), frequency of compliance with testing guidelines (e.g., annual dilated retinal exams in DM), and clinical outcomes (e.g., myocardial infarction, hospitalizations). Aim 3 will be accomplished by surveying all participants using the PHR, along with nurses and physicians at the study sites, and by conducting focus groups of PHR participants, nurses, and physicians to determine the most useful features of the PHR and to barriers and facilitators of use.