Implementation of guideline-based lipid reporting and rate of lipid lowering therapy prescription.

Abstract

Lipid goal attainment remains suboptimal due to patient, provider, and system level factors. We aimed to assess whether updated, guideline-based lipid reporting and clinical decision support was associated with different lipid-lowering therapy (LLT) prescription patterns. We conducted a retrospective study in our electronic health record (EHR) comparing prescriptions within 90 days of lab reporting both prior to the reporting change (21,417 patients in 2019-2020) and after (39,866 patients in 2020-2021). We found a significant increase in the initiation of LLT in patients > 40 years of age with LDL-C ≥ 100  mg/dL, with 2377 (11.6%) initiated prior to compared to 6205 (16.3%) after the reporting change (P < .001). Among 4469 adult patients with ASCVD and LDL-C ≥ 70 mg/dL prior to (n = 2040) and after (n = 3277) the reporting change, there was a significantly higher rate of LLT initiation, 444 (25.9%) prior to vs 875 (31.8%) after; P < .001. In conclusion, after implementation of updated guideline-based lipid test reporting, we observed higher initiation rates of LLT for indicated patients. Our study suggests that guideline-based reporting of lipid test results may aid in guideline implementation.