Heart Health Check Toolkit

Streamline CVD risk assessment and management in general practice with the Heart Health Check Toolkit

Heart Health Check describes the first MBS items (699 and 177) that incorporate absolute cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk calculation and facilitate assessment on an annual basis.

Routine preventative heart health checks are important.

• The burden of CVD remains high in Australia.

• CVD causes one in four of all deaths and accounts for 1,619 hospitalisations per day.^1,2

• Over half of Australian adults live with three or more modifiable risk factors for CVD.³

• Modifiable CVD risk factors account for 90% of risk of heart attack, reinforcing the fact that CVD is largely preventable.⁴

This Toolkit provides practical advice and resources, as well as ready-to-use templates, to help you and your practice integrate Heart Health Checks into routine patient care. Click on one of the tiles below to get started, or use the buttons in the menu above to jump to the section that interests you.

For queries or to provide feedback about this Toolkit, please email [email protected].

References

_{1. Australian Bureau of Statistics. ‘Causes of Death, Australia, 2018’. 2019. https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/health/causes-death/causes-death-australia/2018}

_{2. Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. National Hospital Morbidity Database (NHMD). 2020.}

_{3. Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. Heart, stroke and vascular disease. 2021. https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/heart-stroke-vascular-diseases/hsvd-facts/contents/about}

_{4. Yusuf S, Hawken S, Ounpuu S, et al. Effect of potentially modifiable risk factors associated with myocardial infarction in 52 countries (the INTERHEART study): case-control study. Lancet. 2004;364(9438):937–952. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(04)17018-9.}