The Collaborative Cardiovascular Risk Reduction in Primary Care (CCARP) Study

Abstract

This simple cardiovascular care protocol for nonspecialist pharmacists did not result in a clear improvement to cardiovascular risk reduction success among patients in a primary care medical clinic. The intervention did, however, appear to improve statin utilization.

Pharmacist’s Use of Screening Tools to Estimate Risk of CVD: A Review of the Literature

“…In one study the advertising was targeted to males at high risk of CVD [36]. For a further two studies, participants were referred for CVD screening [24,30]. For the remaining study [32] participant recruitment was not clear.…”

Designing Quality Health Services Research: Why Comparative Effectiveness Studies Are Needed and Why Pharmacists Should Be Involved

“…3 It is true that if a finding is not significant with the one-tailed test, as is the case in their study, it would still be nonsignificant with a two-tailed test. However, if a two-sample test had been used for the sample size calculation, it would have resulted in a larger sample size calculation and perhaps sufficient power to detect differences with a decreased chance for type II error.…”

“…3 These authors have given me permission to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of their study design so that optimal study designs in health services research involving pharmacist interventions can be discussed. The Scientific Editors hope that this editorial will stimulate extensive discussion, training, and other efforts that improve the quality of our grant applications, research studies, and published papers.…”

Collaborative Cardiovascular Risk Reduction in Primary Care II (CCARP II)

“…In a previous study conducted by our group that relied on physician referral to identify patients, we observed slower accrual of patients despite broader inclusion criteria and a longer period of patient enrolment. 18 In the current project, the responsibility for case finding was given to the pharmacist to ensure a systematic process was carried out. The high number of patients identified confirms our hypothesis that there is still a need for a systematic approach to identify patients with uncontrolled CV risk factors.…”

“…18 In our view, the responsibilities underlying pharmaceutical care should require pharmacists to address the needs of highrisk patient groups. 18 One major barrier to this objective is the process used for patient identification. For instance, the majority of pharmacist CV intervention studies rely on physicians to identify patients eligible for the intervention.…”