Episode 9: Closing the Gap on Heart Health in Long-Term Care

Andie Cartwright

Hey everyone—welcome back to another episode of Better Living Through Data! I’m Andie Cartwright, joined as always by Anthony Pero. Today we’re tackling a topic that’s way more common than folks realize: hyperlipidemia in long-term care facilities. Anthony, did you see the numbers from that new study?

Anthony Pero

Hey Andie, yeah, I did. Honestly, the gap is just, well, it’s bigger than most people would guess. So, out of over 675,000 long-term care residents with hyperlipidemia in this real-world dataset, only about 75% actually received any treatment for it. That means a quarter of these folks—who all have a known diagnosis—aren’t on therapy at all, and that’s mostly statins for the ones who do get treated.

Andie Cartwright

Yeah, and zooming out—there’s, like, over 96 million adults in the U.S. recommended for statins, but you know what percentage actually take them? Only 40.7%. And, not to flood folks with numbers here, but in some of the earlier studies on long-term care, the treatment rate was down at 17%. So, we’re doing a bit better recently, but it’s nowhere close to where guidelines say we should be.

Anthony Pero

Exactly. And it makes you wonder, right? Hyperlipidemia is a huge risk factor for heart disease, so why aren’t we seeing better adherence? I mean, we’ve talked about guideline gaps before—remember that episode where we dug into chronic disease management in LTC? This really builds on that.

Andie Cartwright

Totally. And I feel like, even when you’re working closely with pharmacy teams or consulting pharmacists—in what you’d call a pretty regulated environment—data keeps revealing these unexpected gaps. I remember a project at one of our partner facilities. Everyone thought “we’ve got our statin prescribing under control,” but the real-world numbers told a different story. It’s always humbling.

Anthony Pero

Yeah. That’s where having access to granular EHR data is a game changer. Without that, you just wouldn’t spot these gaps. It gets at the heart of, like, what’s actually happening versus what we think is happening.

Anthony Pero

So, diving deeper, it’s not just about the overall under-treatment—it’s who gets left out. Those odds ratios in the study really jump off the page. Females had 25% lower odds of receiving guideline-directed hyperlipidemia medications compared to males, and residents living in high social vulnerability areas were 20% less likely to be treated. That’s not just a small gap, it’s structural.

Andie Cartwright

Yeah, and it’s not like those are just numbers on a chart—they translate to missed cardiovascular prevention opportunities for real people. I feel like we’re finally starting to talk more about intersectionality in healthcare, right? The way being female and living in a high social vulnerability area sort of combines to put you at an even bigger disadvantage. And this study really confirmed it using the logistic regression model—adjusted for pretty much everything: age, co-morbidities, you name it.

Anthony Pero

Exactly, and you see this play out on the ground. I remember working with a facility in the Midwest—that’s kind of my go-to example—where the rates of therapy for women, especially those from lower-income zip codes, were just not where they needed to be. The leadership did something simple but impactful: they implemeted targeted efforts around staff education about social vulnerability and care gaps. Literally, within a few months, adherence numbers started ticking up. I mean, it’snot a silver bullet, but small changes yield big results.

Andie Cartwright

Yeah—totally. It’s like, sometimes you need the data to hold up a mirror so the team can see where improvement is needed. And honestly, that’s one of the reasons I love these conversations; it’s never just about medication—it’s about the people and the place and the systems, all tangled together.

Anthony Pero

Absolutely, and—well, it sounds a little cliché, but the data lets you surface those patterns that wouldn’t be obvious otherwise. Like, it’s easy to assume treatment is equal until you look at it by gender, region, or, say, insurance status. Where was I going with this? Oh right—when we bring a magnifying glass to those subgroups, we can start addressing disparities head on.

Andie Cartwright

And once you see those care gaps, the next question is always “okay, well, so what can we actually do about it?” What stood out to me in the study was how dominant statins are—they’re, like, 72% of all treatment cases. But alternatives, like cholesterol absorption inhibitors and omega-3s, are almost invisible in practice.

Anthony Pero

Yeah. It kind of points to an education gap, right? Both in providers and also among residents and their families. If more people knew about statin alternatives—say, for folks who have statin intolerance—we might do a better job closing the gap for untreated cases. The clinical implication in the study was pretty clear: consultant pharmacists are uniquely positioned to break down those barriers and individualize therapy to what’s best for each resident.

Andie Cartwright

Absolutely—and honestly, this is where our work at PointClickCare Life Sciences really comes to life. By connecting real-world EHR data to frontline clinicians and pharmacy teams, we help them spot where actual practice isn’t quite lining up with American Heart Association guidelines. And not to be too “data evangelist” about it, but that drives measurable change if you integrate those insights into daily workflow and interdisciplinary education.

Anthony Pero

Couldn’t agree more. At the end of the day, it takes more than just publishing guidelines—it takes collaborative leadership. That means leveraging EHR insights, empowering consultant pharmacists, and building ongoing education across disciplines. We’ve seen it in real facilities: when everyone’s bought in, you can improve both the rate and the equity of hyperlipidemia management in LTC.

Andie Cartwright

Alright, I think we could riff on interprofessional education for another hour, but—let’s wrap it up. The bottom line: use your data, educate your teams, and partner up across facilities to move the needle on cardiovascular care, especially for those who’ve been consistently underserved. We’ll dig deeper into more opportunities for better living through data next episode. Anthony, thanks as always for the conversation!

Anthony Pero

Thank you, Andie! Always a pleasure. Take care, everyone, and we’ll see you next time on Better Living Through Data.