Achievement and quality measure attainment in patients hospitalized with atrial fibrillation: Results from The Get With The Guidelines - Atrial Fibrillation (GWTG-AFIB) registry.

Ullal AJ, Holmes DN, Lytle BL, Matsouaka RA, Sheng S, Desai NR, Curtis AB, Fang MC, McCabe PJ, Fonarow GC, Russo AM, Lewis WR, Heidenreich PA, Piccini JP, Turakhia MP, Perino AC. Achievement and quality measure attainment in patients hospitalized with atrial fibrillation: Results from The Get With The Guidelines - Atrial Fibrillation (GWTG-AFIB) registry. American heart journal. 2022 Mar 1; 245:90-99.

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Abstract:

BACKGROUND: The Get With The Guidelines - Atrial Fibrillation (GWTG-AFIB) Registry uses achievement and quality measures to improve the care of patients with atrial fibrillation (AF). We sought to evaluate overall and site-level variation in attainment of these measures among sites participating in the GWTG-AFIB Registry. METHODS: From the GWTG-AFIB registry, we included patients with AF admitted between 1/3/2013 and 6/30/2019. We described patient-level attainment and variation in attainment across sites of 6 achievement measures with 1) defect-free scores (percent of patients with all eligible measures attained), and 2) composite opportunity scores (percent of all eligible patient measures attained). We also described attainment of 11 quality measures at the patient-level. RESULTS: Among 80,951 patients hospitalized for AF (age 70±13 years, 47.0% female; CHADS-VASc 3.6±1.8) at 132 sites. Site-level defect-free scores ranged from 4.7% to 85.8% (25, 50, 75 percentile: 32.7%, 52.1%, 64.4%). Composite opportunity scores ranged from 39.4% to 97.5% (25, 50, 75: 68.1%, 80.3%, 87.1%). Attainment was notably low for the following quality measures: 1) aldosterone antagonist prescription when ejection fraction = 35% (29% of those eligible); and 2) avoidance of antiplatelet therapy with OAC in patients without coronary/peripheral artery disease (81% of those eligible). CONCLUSIONS: Despite high overall attainment of care measures across GWTG-AFIB registry sites, large site variation was present with meaningful opportunities to improve AF care beyond OAC prescription, including but not limited to prescription of aldosterone antagonists in those with AF and systolic dysfunction and avoidance of non-indicated adjunctive antiplatelet therapy.