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LEADING EDGE
Ryan Gilles, M.D.,
demonstrates the Statin
Choice Decision Aid at the
Kootenai Clinic Family
Medicine office in Coeur
d’Alene. The tool shows
a visual representation of
the risks and benefits of
taking statin medication
to prevent heart attacks.
P A R T N E R S I N
C A R E
Learn more
about Kootenai Health’s
involvement with the Mayo Clinic
Care Network at
KH.org/mayo.
KH . ORG
5
By Andrea Nagel
Kootenai Health
is participating in a research study
by the Mayo Clinic Care Network. The study, called the
Statin Choice Implementation Project, is designed to
study the effects of physicians and patients working
together to make medical decisions. This particular
project focuses on the decision to start taking
statin (cholesterol-lowering) medication to prevent
cardiovascular events like heart attacks.
The study was prompted by changes in clinical guide-
lines that recommend when cholesterol medication
should be used to reduce the risk of heart attack in
patients with certain risk levels. The new guidelines
are controversial because they suggest a risk cutoff
level that patients and physicians (including leading
experts) may not agree with. Under the study, physi-
cians involve patients in the decision-making process
by informing them about their heart attack risk level
without a medication and how that risk might change
if they choose to start taking one.
The medical community is calling this approach to
making decisions together “shared decision making.”
“The study is also assessing current attitudes about
shared decision making,” said Ryan Gilles, M.D.,
Kootenai Clinic Family Medicine Coeur d’Alene
Residency and physician leader for the Statin Choice
Implementation Project at Kootenai. “As we use and
integrate this approach in our care model, we’ll be able
to track changes in what our patients and physicians
think about collaborating on health care decisions.”
Over the next two years, all of Kootenai’s primary
care clinics will implement a new tool, called the
Statin Choice Decision Aid, into their routines. The
web-based tool displays a patient’s individual risk of
having a heart attack both with and without a statin
medication. It displays this information visually in a
way that patients can easily view and understand. The
goal of the tool is to encourage patients and their phy-
sician to have meaningful discussions about whether
starting a statin is appropriate or not.
“We are really excited to have Kootenai partnering
with us in this project,” said Victor Montori, M.D.,
lead developer of the Statin Choice tool and principal
investigator for the study. “Patients and physicians
everywhere are struggling with whether to start a statin
medication to prevent heart attacks and strokes.
Kootenai is figuring out how to improve these conver-
sations using the Statin Choice tool. This could
help improve the quality of
preventive care for a lot
of people.”
Using Research to
Improve Treatment
T H E M AY O C L I N I C C A R E N E T W O R K I S
W O R K I N G T O I M P R O V E C O L L A B O R AT I O N