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Intermountain Risk Score Could Help Heart Failure Cases

From: The Hospitalist, November 2011

by Richard Quinn

A risk measurement model created by the Heart Institute at Intermountain Medical Center in Murray, Utah, may one day be a familiar tool to HM groups.

Known as the Intermountain Risk Score (http://intermountainhealthcare.org/IMRS/), the tool uses 15 parameters culled from complete blood counts (CBC) and the basic metabolic profile (BMP) to determine risk. The model, which is free, was used to stratify mortality risk in heart failure patients receiving an internal cardioverter defibrillator (ICD) in a paper presented in September at the 15th annual scientific meeting of the Heart Failure Society of America.

The report found that mortality at one-year post-ICD was 2.4%, 11.8%, and 28.2% for the low-, moderate-, and high-risk groups, respectively. And while the study was narrow in its topic, Benjamin Horne, PhD, director of cardiovascular and genetic epidemiology at the institute, says its application to a multitude of inpatient settings is a natural evolution for the tool.

“One of the things about the innovation of this risk score is the lab tests are so common already,” Dr. Horne says. “They are so familiar to physicians. They’ve been around for decades. What no one had realized before is they had additional risk information contained within them.”