The Gaps in Cardiac Rehabilitation Referral

Additionally, patient-level factors alone cannot explain the significant disparities in the use of CR (57.9% to 61.2%) compared with other quality-of-care indexes, such as antiplatelet (97% to 97.5%), beta-blocker (84.8%), angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitor or angiotensin-receptor blocker (79.6%), and statin (89.8%) therapies (1). More importantly, most of the reported patient-level factors that are perceived to be barriers to CR referral (e.g., age, comorbidities, insurance status, distance from CR center) are generally not reversible. [...]it is necessary to assess the role of other reversible factors that can be potentially corrected and overcome.