Skip to main content

Heart Disease: Professional and Educational Resources

Quality improvement tools and protocols

The CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) offers outstanding resources for the prevention, detection, and treatment of heart disease and stroke. These offerings are part of its Million Hearts® initiative, a national movement to prevent heart attacks and strokes.

  • Cardiac Rehabilitation Change Package—This quality improvement tool is designed for teams from hospitals and cardiac rehabilitation programs. It helps put systems and strategies in place that target improved care for more eligible patients. The tool offers process improvements that cardiac rehabilitation champions can implement. It includes change concepts and change ideas, as well as tools and resources.
  • Evidence-based treatment Protocols—The Million Hearts® initiative encourages using standard treatment protocols for improving blood pressure control. Simple, evidence-based treatment protocols can have a powerful impact in improving control by:
    • Clarifying titration intervals and treatment options.
    • Expanding the types of staff who can assist in timely follow-up with patients.
    • Serving as clinical decision support at the point of care when embedded in electronic health records.

These protocols allow for every opportunity to achieve control. Resources include a variety of evidence-based hypertension treatment protocols, along with a template for developing your own custom protocol.

  • Hypertension Control Change Package (PDF). This quality improvement tool for clinicians in ambulatory clinical settings helps improve hypertension control. It offers an evidence-based listing of process improvements to more efficiently and effectively care for patients with hypertension. The guide includes change concepts, change ideas, and evidence- or practice-based tools and resources.
  • Measure Up Pressure Down: Provider Toolkit to Improve Hypertension Control. (PDF) This toolkit was created by the American Medical Group Foundation and American Medical Group Association. It offers useful tools, tips, and resources to jump-start a hypertension quality improvement initiative. The toolkit is based on best practices from the group’s hypertension collaborative. It includes concise one-pagers with action steps for implementing evidence-based processes.

Note: This resource covers accurate blood pressure measurement techniques. We recommend it replace the Wisconsin Heart Disease and Stroke Program’s 2010 Blood Pressure Measurement Toolkit, which was based on previous clinical guidelines.

Learn about other Million Hearts Tools & Protocols

More resources

Glossary

 
Last revised June 20, 2023