Use of Chronic Disease Registries to Optimize Cardiovascular Health.

Cardiovascular disease remains a significant cause of mortality and morbidity despite relentless ongoing research all over the world. The different cardiovascular societies and research organizations are in a constant effort to improve overall cardiovascular (CV) outcome by conducting trials and establishment of guidelines. The ever growing health care costs have enforced governmental agencies to develop quality performance measures which are addressed towards increasing quality, safety, efficiency of patient care and to curtail the cost of health care. Clinical registries are observational databases which provide detailed information about patient population, a specific disease or a clinical condition, therapy or procedure. These can be utilized in estimating appropriateness of health care delivery and providing feedback to providers and health care organizations for gauging their performance at regional and national level. The introduction of electronic health records (EHR) has immensely helped the workflow and maintenance of clinical registries with their integrated software.