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Potential ways to conduct more atrial fibrillation screenings in primary care

A retrospective analysis of electronic health records in England identified several ways to perform more opportunistic screenings for atrial fibrillation among primary care patients. The findings were published in the British Journal of General Practice.

“There is ongoing debate about the benefits of systematic or opportunistic screening,” James Cole, MRCGP, GP, of the Centre for Primary Care and Public Health in London, and colleagues wrote.

Cole and colleagues evaluated the rate of pulse regularity checks in adults aged 65 years and older from 2007 to 2011 and again from 2012 to 2017 after the implementation of an intervention designed to increase screening.

Researchers found that financial incentives, organizational alignment, peer-performance dashboards and standardized data entry led to atrial fibrillation checks increasing from a mean of 7.3% pre-intervention to 66.4% post-intervention, culminating in a rate of 93.1% in the intervention’s final year.

In addition, there was a mean rate of 61.4 patients checked for every 1,000 prior to this intervention, and this rate improved to 64.5 patients checked for every 1,000 afterwards. Researchers also identified 790 new cases of atrial fibrillation as a result of the interventions.

Regression analysis confirmed the findings, Cole and colleagues wrote, adding opportunistic pulse regularity checks are “associated with an increase in the detection of new [atrial fibrillation] cases, management of which is likely to have an impact on the public health importance of stroke reduction.” – by Janel Miller

Disclosure: The authors report no relevant financial disclosures.