Cardiac EASE (Ensuring Access and Speedy Evaluation)--design of a single point of entry and a multidisciplinary team to reduce waiting times in the Canadian health care system.

Out-patient cardiac consultation in academic group practices often lacks a coordinated intake process, making it difficult to perform prospective testing or to direct undifferentiated consultations to the cardiologist with the shortest waiting list. We created a programmatic approach, with a single point of entry to improve the efficiency of cardiology consultation, without departing from the Canada Health Act. The purpose of this paper is to describe the design of Cardiac EASE.

Interpretation of exercise stress test recordings: concordance between nurse practitioner and cardiologist.

Aim: Cardiology nurse practitioners (NPs) conduct exercise stress tests (ESTs) for diagnosis of cardiac disease. The diagnostic concordance of NPs to cardiologists has not been assessed. The hypothesis was that an NP is as reliable as a cardiologist in determining ST-segment depression, detecting arrhythmias, and making a diagnostic assessment.