Are You a Primary Care Provider in Michigan? 

The rates of high blood pressure, heart attack, and stroke in Michigan are all higher than the U.S. median. Residents of rural Michigan are more likely to die prematurely from cardiovascular disease (CVD) than urban residents.*

Healthy Hearts for Michigan (HH4M) offers primary care practices a dedicated Practice Advisor and other resources they need to help patients with CVD:

• Coaching to help enhance shared decision making and patient engagement
• Guidance to help increase workflow efficiency and promote team-based care
• Assistance to streamline provider-to-provider electronic referrals
• Support to improve MIPS, HEDIS, and other reporting program scores

The HH4M Practice Advisor assists the practice with:

• Leveraging existing EHR data to identify undiagnosed hypertension “Hiding in Plain Sight”
• Implementing or improving upon a patient Self-Measured Blood Pressure program
• Employing an “Ask-Advise-Connect” opt-out Tobacco Cessation program

Altarum, along with our partners Michigan Center for Rural Health and Upper Peninsula Health Care Solutions, is excited to announce the Healthy Hearts for Michigan program, a 12-month research study in partnership with Northwestern University. We aim to assess the capacity of Michigan’s primary care practices to adopt and sustain quality improvement strategies for treatment of hypertension and smoking, the leading risk factors of CVD.

Who is eligible? Michigan-based primary care providers.

What is required? Support staff, with provider guidance, will work with a dedicated Practice Advisor to assess current workflows, establish screening and treatment protocols, and collect quarterly study data.

HH4M is funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ).
Study Number: STU00213920.
Principal Investigators: Anya Day, MPH and Theresa Walunas, PhD

*MDHHS 2019 BRFS Annual Reports