Grant: CIHR New Investigator

My research program is focused on improving the manner in which health care is delivered to patients with heart disease. This requires accurate data on how much health care costs, on quality of life and on patient outcomes. Finally, these data are integrated into mathematical economic models which provide valuable information to policy makers and clinicians. The main project I will focus on over the next 5 years will examine why patients with stable heart disease (referred to as stable angina) are sometimes treated with only medications, and in other situations undergo procedures such as angioplasty or open-heart surgery. We will try to understand the causes of this variation and the consequences in terms of health care costs, quality of life, and survival,using provincial-wide registries in Ontario and Alberta. We hope to determine if the variation is due to differences in the types of patients, or if it is mostly physician behaviour or hospital culture that dictates the choice of treatment. To understand if this variation is important, we will determine if patients treated in a particular way, or at a particular type of hospital do better or use fewer health care resources. We believe untangling the root causes of this variation in practice is the first step in improving how care is delivered to this large group of patients. The results of this project will lay the foundation for a larger research program in which tools to help physicians make the best decision for their particular patient can be developed and evaluated. We believe this in turn will help make the best use of scarce health care dollars and improve the outcomes for patients with heart disease.