Priorities among effective clinical preventive services in British Columbia, Canada.

Background: Despite the long-standing experience of rating the evidence for clinical preventive services, the delivery of effective clinical preventive services in Canada and elsewhere is less than optimal. We outline an approach used in British Columbia to assist in determining which effective clinical preventive services are worth doing.

Methods: We calculated the clinically preventable burden and cost-effectiveness for 28 clinical preventive services that received a 'strong or conditional (weak) recommendation for' by the Canadian Task Force on Preventive Health Care or an 'A' or 'B' rating by the United States Preventive Services Task Force.

Information system support as a critical success factor for chronic disease management: Necessary but not sufficient.

Unlabelled: Improvement of chronic disease management in primary care entails monitoring indicators of quality over time and across patients and practices. Informatics tools are needed, yet implementing them remains challenging.

Objective: To identify critical success factors enabling the translation of clinical and operational knowledge about effective and efficient chronic care management into primary care practice.

Initial experience with routine selective carotid arteriography by vascular surgeons.

We report the results of our first 2 years of experience with routine carotid angiography with an emphasis on technique and complications. We reviewed the hospital records, office charts, and prospective quality-assurance database records of 336 patients undergoing cerebrovascular arteriograms and collected data on the indications, complications, and technical aspects of the procedures. Indications for angiography included carotid stenosis in 331 (95%) patients, subclavian steal syndrome in 9 patients, vertebrobasilar insufficiency in 6 patients, and carotid body tumor in 2 patients.

The expanded Chronic Care Model: an integration of concepts and strategies from population health promotion and the Chronic Care Model.

Given the increasing incidence of chronic diseases across the world, the search for more effective strategies to prevent and manage them is essential. The use of the Chronic Care Model (CCM) has assisted healthcare teams to demonstrate effective, relevant solutions to this growing challenge. However, the current CCM is geared to clinically oriented systems, and is difficult to use for prevention and health promotion practitioners.