The International Consortium on Health Outcomes Measurement (ICHOM), a Harvard-based effort dedicated to defining a global standard set of outcome measures that really matter to patients for coronary artery disease (CAD)...and to drive adoption of these measures worldwide to unlock the potential of value-based health care. ICHOM has assembled leaders from CV registries and research databases around to world to redesign health care systems to improve “value,” defined as optimizing outcomes per dollar spent. The project has successfully focused on creating a minimum set of outcome metrics for the management of CAD. By developing standardized patient related outcomes for people with CAD, institutional comparisons, patient education, self-assessment and dissemination of best practices will be possible. Today, we lack a recommended global standard outcome set for CAD, and as will be revealed, a significant diversity of CAD measures confounds collaboration on outcomes and research.
The ICHOM CAD Working Group, consisting of over 20 global experts in the area of CAD representing tertiary institutions, the public and private sector, registries and patients, recognized the importance of cross-disciplinary measures incluidng medical management, PCI, and surgery. Patient-reported outcomes, health risk factors, and treatment complications were measured..
Standardized outcome reporting is a necessary component in the movement towards high-value health care. This project is an initial step in an iterative process toward improving the care of patients with CAD and expanding the abilities of participating nations and registries to collaborate more effectively on research and outcomes improvement.
