Abstract 196: Omission of Heart Transplant Recipients from the Appropriate Use Criteria for Revascularization and Impact on High-Volume Heart Transplant Centers
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background: For heart transplant recipients, guidelines endorse routine coronary angiography and percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) to screen for and treat cardiac allograft vasculopathy (CAV). However, current Appropriate Use Criteria for Revascularization (AUC-R) do not recognize CAV as a unique PCI indication, and thus PCI for CAV is often labeled “rarely appropriate (RA).” The AUC-R’s omission of CAV patients, and its impact on RA PCI rates and hospital pay-for-performance reimbursement have never been described. Methods: Using NCDR CathPCI Registry data, we identified all elective PCIs from 96 Medicare-approved heart transplant centers between 2009Q3 and 2017Q2. NCDR-reported rates of RA elective PCI were compared before and after exclusion of CAV patients using paired t-tests. The annual pay-for-performance financial incentives potentially lost by heart transplant centers were estimated based on AUC-R performance thresholds published by Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield’s Quality-In-Sights®: Hospital Incentive Program (Q-HIP®). Results: Of 168,802 elective PCIs performed in heart transplant centers, 1,854 (1.1%) were for CAV. CAV patients, compared with non-heart transplant recipients, were more frequently asymptomatic (81.9% vs. 33.4%, p<0.001) and had lower rates of prior stress testing (15.0% vs. 58.4%, p<0.001), resulting in higher RA PCI rates (66.0% vs 16.9%, p<0.001). In transplant centers, the absolute difference in RA rates (before vs. after exclusion of CAV patients) was directly associated with the proportion of total PCIs performed in CAV patients (p<0.001, Figure ). In a sample of 16 heart transplant centers participating in Q-HIP® during the 2017 calendar year measurement period, 2 (13%) centers could have each observed reimbursement increases estimated at ~$90,000 dollars if their Q-HIP® scorecards were re-scored after excluding CAV patients. Conclusion: Two-thirds of PCI cases in CAV patients are deemed RA by the AUC-R. The failure of the AUC-R to recognize CAV as a unique PCI indication may lead to inflated RA PCI rates and has the potential for substantial negative pay-for-performance implications in heart transplant centers. The AUC-R should recognize CAV as a unique PCI indication so that heart transplant centers are not penalized for performing PCI for CAV.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".