A recent release from the American College of Cardiology and the American Heart Association (AHA) provides adult patients with atrial flutter, or atrial fibrillation, with updated quality measures and clinical performance standards.
New measures now include patient safety, inpatient setting and other important factors. This serves to update the earlier measure from 2008. The implementation notes for the new measures were first given in 2011.
“Atrial fibrillation is the most common cardiac arrhythmia in the United States,” Paul Heidenreich, professor and vice chair for clinical, quality and analytics in the department of medicine at the Stanford University School of Medicine, said. “This condition impacts between 2.7 million and 6.1 million American adults, and this number is expected to double by 2050. Updating the measure set was a priority for the ACC and AHA.”
The expanded standards will improve the care that patients receive.
“The writing committee believes that implementation of this clinical performance and quality measure set by providers, physician practices and hospital systems will help to enhance the quality of care provided to patients with atrial fibrillation in both the inpatient and outpatient settings, and thereby improve their quality of life,” Heidenreich said.
