Table 1 Provider stances toward adopting risk prediction for CVD treatment and prevention

Enthusiastic adopters

“I would be the happiest man in the world because right now today my nurse did a printout of all my patients with high blood pressure that are above the 140/90, and so we’re going to, she’s going to try to call them and see if we can help them and find out what’s going on, and we wouldn’t be doing that, we’d be focusing on patients as we see them and going from there. So we’re doing a lot of wasted, in my humble opinion, we’re chasing numbers, we’re not chasing patients and that doesn’t do anybody any good except it makes the VA look good on Fox news or wherever, whoever’s counting the beans and wants to say, ‘See? We’ve got 95% of the VA patients here are at goal!’ It doesn’t matter they’re all dying, but they’re at goal and it’s irrelevant” (10028EA) (PCP, physician)

Cautious Adopters

“I would be a little uncomfortable with [abandoning treat to target] because we’re based on targets that they’re practiced, but you know I’m willing to abandon it if I can get comfortable with whatever goal we go with.” (10003CA)

“I would take whatever advice you give me and I think it would help me in my thinking though. It doesn’t mean that I have to stick to it…, but at least it will give me some guidance. I think it should still be there, I don’t think it is authoritative.” (10011CA)

Non-adopters

“I guess I’m just used to the guidelines and we just do them” (10001NA)

“I’m not going to ignore other targets which I traditionally follow…if they give me a list of my patients who are not under control, I do pay attention to that.” (10031NA)