Statins: who, when and how?

Almost 1 million Australians aged 45–74 years, who are at high cardiovascular (CV) risk, are not prescribed lipid-modifying and BP-lowering medicines as recommended.

This Clinical e-Audit will help you reflect on the individual management of your patients by guiding you to identify:

• Who would benefit most from statin treatment
  
• When to start statin treatment and the importance of CV risk assessment in the decision
  
• How to implement a systematic approach to improve adherence, and assess and manage suspected statin-associated adverse effects.
  

Our Clinical e-Audits are free quality improvement activities that help GPs review their current prescribing practice for patients with certain conditions, compared with current best practice guidelines.

What’s involved:

• completing electronic data collection for 10 patients
  
• securely submitting de-identified data online
  
• receiving immediate patient-specific feedback to assist implementation of changes to practice
  
• reviewing individual and peer feedback results based on best practice clinical indicators
  
• recording progress of individual patients automatically identified for review
  
• reflecting on improvements in practice.
  

• recognise the importance of managing lipid levels in the context of absolute CV risk
  
• outline ways to optimise statin treatment to achieve lipid targets
  
• implement a systematic approach to manage, and assess adverse effects of statins
  
• identify strategies to improve adherence to lipid-modifying treatment and ensure an adequate trial
  
• describe when to add a second lipid-modifying medicine to treatment, based on guidelines.

You will…

• have access to a summary of best practice recommendations
  
• receive practical advice to provide to your patients
  
• create a management plan for each patient
  
• receive immediate feedback and be able to compare your results with those of your peers.