Abstract 121: Vascular Risk Factor Control in the Year After Ischemic Stroke Versus Myocardial Infarction

Background: The Veterans Health Administration has multiple quality improvement activities directed at improving vascular risk factor control. We sought to examine facility quality of blood pressure (BP) control ( Methods: We assembled a retrospective cohort of patients hospitalized with stroke or AMI (fiscal year 2011). Facilities were included if they admitted ≥25 stroke patients and ≥25 AMI patients. A facility-level consolidated measure of vascular risk factor control was calculated for the 3 processes of care (number of passes divided by number of opportunities). Results: A total of 2432 patients had a new stroke and 4873 had a new primary AMI (at 75 facilities). Stroke patients had worse vascular risk factor control than AMI patients (mean facility rate on consolidated measure: stroke, 70% [95%CI 0.68-0.72] vs AMI, 77% [0.75-0.78]). The greatest disparity between stroke and AMI patients was in hypertension control: at 87% of hospitals, fewer stroke patients achieved BP control than AMI patients (mean facility pass rate: stroke, 41% vs AMI, 52%; p Conclusions: These results demonstrated clinically substantial disparities in hypertension control among patients with stroke vs patients with AMI. It may be that cardiologists provided risk factor management to AMI patients that stroke patients did not receive. The etiology of these observed differences merits additional investigation.