Intro:
Anticoagulation is indicated for many patients with atrial fibrillation (AF) for prevention of cardioembolic stroke, although national proportions of eligible patients receiving anticoagulation remain suboptimal. Automated and semi-automated quality improvement techniques including registries and population health coordinators may help identify and increase eligible patients to receive anticoagulation.
Methods:
We queried our electronic health record to identify patients without anticoagulation but with atrial fibrillation (as identified as either paroxysmal atrial fibrillation, persistent atrial fibrillation, chronic atrial fibrillation, typical atrial flutter, atypical atrial flutter, or unspecified atrial flutter) either on the problem list or as billed administrative claims between September 2016 - September 2019 in MGH outpatient cardiology clinics. All patients were participating in MGH cardiology, with their primary care based either within MGH or outside of MGH. Then, we conducted detailed chart review to calculate thromboembolic risk with respective CHADS-VASC score and confirmed that the patient was not receiving anticoagulation. A typology was developed as charts were reviewed to categorize reasons for lacking anticoagulation. These categories were grouped into broader categories representing a (1) potential quality problem or (2) appropriate lack of anticoagulation.
Results:
Of 100 patients, 59 were deemed to have a potential quality problem and 41 were deemed to have appropriate lack of anticoagulation. Of the patients with a potential quality problem, 11 have a CHADS VASC score of 1, 18 have a CHADS VASC score of 2, 6 have a CHADS VASC score of 3, 10 have a CHADS VASC score of 4, and 8 have a CHADS of 5, and 6 have a CHADS VASC of 6 or above. Additionally, 3 patients have been lost to follow up, 12 patients had presented with current symptoms of AF within the last year, and 44 patients exhibited acute history of AF symptoms. 41 patients did not present concern for multiple reasons including: CHADS VASC=0, deceased, patients declined medication, followed by outside cardiologist, technology and medication discrepancies, inaccurate administrative data for AF, and prior major bleeding.
Conclusions:
We found that most un-anticoagulated AF patients identified by administrative claims and EHR problem lists are likely eligible for anticoagulation. Of those, most have a history of paroxysmal AF. As such, registry-based strategies based on queries of past AF may improve rates of anticoagulation in this population. Since automated queries still detect many patients with contraindications such as bleeding or inaccurate administrative data, manual review of administrative queries is likely to be important in quality efforts for AF.
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