Data was collected from the medical records of 4,863 patients, and a total of 3569 patients were interviewed and examined six months after hospitalization. This survey was conducted in the United States and focused on data from patients admitted to 52 randomly selected hospitals. Researchers randomly selected 125 consecutive patients who were admitted to each hospital for first acute myocardial ischemia, acute MI, first CABG surgery, or first angioplasty. Medical records were examined to collect data regarding the hospital intervention. Data were also collected six months after discharge to assess follow-up interventions and attainment of goals.
Physicians have good knowledge and they have good attitude toward prevention.
It's the system that is against it. What we need to do is reorganize inpatient and office-based cardiology care to do prevention. For example, we could a nurse case manager system, an office specialist, or a preventive cardiology clinic that you can refer to, but the point is to use a systems approach rather than saying the cardiologist has to do everything. In many places, nurse case manager programs are reimbursable, but nutritionists in nonnurse practitioner services often are not. We need to standardize this and get down to buying service rather than buying people.