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CCORT is funded by a Canadian Institutes of Health Research Team Grant in Cardiovascular Outcomes Research

 

How We Do Research 

The Canadian Cardiovascular Outcomes Research Team (CCORT) uses hospital administrative data, chart abstraction data, clinical databases, national surveys and personal interviews as data sources for research.

Surveys, conducted by CCORT investigators, will be used in several of the CCORT projects to:
  • determine interpretability of data by various stakeholders;
  • determine effectiveness of ethical frameworks for cardiac report cards.

In addition, focus groups will be assembled for several studies to:

  • establish indicators of quality of cardiac care;
  • assess the effectiveness and utility of the cardiac care quality indicators;
  • establish an ethical framework for cardiac report cards.

Databases and Surveys

Hospital administrative data was obtained from the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI), and contains hospital discharge data for all provinces and territories in Canada. This database will be linked to other databases available to CCORT.

Survey data from the Canadian Community Health Survey (CCHS) was made available from Statistics Canada, and contains timely, cross-sectional estimates of health determinants, health status and health system utilization at the level of health-region or combined health regions across Canada.  

From different provinces, several cardiac procedure databases that combine clinical and administrative data include procedural, demographic, patient characteristics and outcome data for patients undergoing cardiac procedures. The provinces that have these cardiac databases include: British Columbia, Ontario, Nova Scotia and Alberta.

Registries of acute myocardial infarction (AMI) patients will also be used from Nova Scotia, Ontario and Quebec that provide data regarding procedures, comorbidities, medications and outcomes following hospital admittance with AMI.

Hospital chart data will also be collected for the largest CCORT project (#1 EFFECT) in order to collect high quality, clinical data for the generation of more specialized report cards on cardiac care.