Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of preventable death in the United States, accounting for close to 17 percent of total healthcare spending – or nearly $300 billion in 2010 alone. Preventing and treating this disease early can lead to both improved health outcomes and reduced healthcare spending. Estimates show that we have the potential to save $190 billion over 10 years through cardiac disease prevention. Such early intervention can also help reduce the use of costly services further down the road, such as cardiac imaging or surgical procedures.
Therefore, the National Quality Strategy has made promoting the most effective prevention, treatment, and intervention practices for the leading causes of mortality, starting with cardiovascular disease a national priority, proposing three goals for improvement:
- Promote cardiovascular health through community interventions that result in improvement of social, economic, and environmental factors.
- Promote cardiovascular health through interventions that result in adoption of the most important healthy lifestyle behaviors across the lifespan.
- Promote cardiovascular health through receipt of effective clinical preventive services across the lifespan in clinical and community settings.
Related NQF Work
- Pulmonary Endorsement Maintenance
This project is an evaluation of the NQF-endorsed® pulmonary and critical care measures and a consideration of new measures, in order to ensure the currency of NQF’s portfolio of voluntary consensus standards.
July 2012 Press Release | January 2013 Press Release | Endorsement Summary
- Cardiovascular Measures Project
In January 2012, NQF endorsed 29 cardiovascular care quality measures, addressing a wide range of cardiovascular issues including: hypertension, coronary artery disease, acute myocardial infarction, percutaneous coronary intervention, atrial fibrillation, and heart failure, as well as other treatments, diagnostic studies, interventions, or procedures associated with these conditions.
Press Release | Endorsement Summary
- MAP Families of Measures: Cardiovascular Disease and Diabetes Task Force
This task force will develop a "family" of aligned measures that includes available measures and measure gaps that span programs, care settings, and levels of analysis for two high-impact conditions – cardiovascular disease and diabetes. This family of measures will address cost of care as related to these conditions.
