Quality Improvement in Cardiovascular Medicine: Challenges and Opportunities

With the costs of healthcare delivery overwhelming the public and private sector in the United States, a focus on value, or the quality per dollar spent, has emerged in recent years. Cardiovascular (CV) disease complexity, prevalence and mortality havedriven the practitioners of CV medicine to the forefront of quality improvement initiatives. By applying some of the basic principles of quality assessment and improvement, professional societies and provider organizations in cardiology havedemonstrated leadership in advancing and disseminating the products of these efforts. In this chapter, we will outlinethe major tools in quality improvement, and describe their application at the organizational and national levelsin order to achieve high-value care.