The Connecticut Cardiovascular Consortium: a unique, state-wide research collaboration to advance clinical outcomes in XXXX with heart disease.

@entity1 @entity583 @entity65
The establishment of "best clinical practices" founded upon evidence-based medicine has become an increasingly important priority. Frequently, management guidelines are derived from published research data and disseminated among practitioners to help optimize @entity1 care. The ultimate clinical impact of these guidelines in the "real world," however, is often clouded by an incomplete assessment of @entity1 outcomes throughout the continuum of health-care delivery models. In order to address this gap in clinical outcome assessment, we propose to establish the Connecticut Cardiovascular Consortium. The Consortium will consist of a collaborative partnership among all 31 Connecticut hospitals working in concert with Connecticut Office of Health Care Access (OHCA). The primary objective of the Consortium will be to assess, compare, and optimize clinical outcomes among Connecticut residents with @entity65 . As an initial goal for the Consortium, we further propose to undertake a prospective, observational study of Connecticut residents who present with @entity583 ( @entity583 ). Recent advances in pharmacologic and mechanical reperfusion for @entity583 have resulted in a need to define the optimal use of these therapies in the community at large. The primary purpose of this study will be to determine the relative merits of different treatment patterns for @entity583 with regard to the use of fibrinolytic therapy and percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI). Particular emphasis will be placed on assessing the relative benefits of urgent mechanical revascularization performed at the state's seven tertiary facilities with PCI capability compared to all other treatment modalities. Successful completion of this unique collaborative endeavor is expected to have significant impact on improved @entity1 care and on current health-care policy for medical resource allocation. Moreover, continued collaboration of health-care providers within the Connecticut Cardiovascular Consortium infrastructure should serve as a useful mechanism for ongoing improvements in evidence-based cardiovascular medicine and clinical research in the state of Connecticut.
