HealthPartners to Study EMR Use in Lowering Heart Disease

A HealthPartners Research Foundation team has received a National Institutes of Health research grant to develop and implement an electronic health record (EHR)-based clinical decision support system to help reduce patients' risk of heart attack or stroke. The team is being led by Patrick O’Connor, MD, MPH, and has received $3.7 million to conduct the five year study.

The team, in collaboration with the University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management, will engineer a point-of-care system that identifies and prioritizes evidence-based treatment options for patients at moderate to high risk for a heart attack or stroke within 10 years. With HealthPartners physicians, they will test its effect on risk in a randomized trial that includes 18 primary care clinics, 60 primary care physicians and 18,000 patients. If successful, this approach will reduce the risk of heart attack or stroke for about 35 percent of adults in the United States and maximize the clinical return on investment for electronic health record systems. It could also be a model for using electronic health record technology to deliver personalized medicine in primary care settings. Bloomington, Minn.-based HealthPartners began implementing electronic medical records in 1997 with success. HealthPartners and Regions Hospital have a total of 3.5 million electronic medical records that can be accessed at all HealthPartners Clinics, Regions Hospital, five HealthPartners Urgent Care clinics and other locations.