Development of delivery indicators and delivery enablers for cardiovascular disease in the UK: a modified Delphi study

Introduction Standards to define and measure quality in healthcare for cardiovascular disease risk reduction and secondary prevention are available, but there is a paucity of indicators that could serve as facilitators of structural change at a system level. This research study aimed to develop a range of delivery indicators to help cardiac clinical networks assess delivery of and progress towards cardiovascular disease objectives.

Methods This study used an adapted version of the European Society of Cardiology’s four-step process for the development of quality indicators. The four steps in this study were as follows: identify critical factors of enablement, construct a list of candidate indicators, select a final set of indicators and assess availability of national data for each indicator. In this iterative process, a core project group of six members was supported by a wider review group of 21 people from the National Health Service (NHS) clinical and management personnel database.

Results The core project group identified six relevant cardiovascular disease priorities in the NHS Long Term Plan and used an iterative process to identify 21 critical factors that impact on their implementation. A total of 57 potential indicators that could be measures of implementation were developed. The core project group agreed on a set of 38 candidate indicators that were circulated to the review group for rating. Based on these scores, the core project group excluded 5 indicators to arrive at a final set of 33 delivery indicators. National datasets were available for 22 of the final indicators, which were designated as delivery indicators. The remaining 11, for which national datasets were not available but locally available datasets could be used, were designated as delivery enablers.

Conclusion The suite of delivery indicators and delivery enablers for cardiovascular disease could allow a more focused evaluation of factors that impact on delivery of healthcare for cardiovascular disease.