Cardiovascular
Health (CVH) Study Group
Heart
Failure Project
The
West Virginia Coalition for Quality Health Care is proud to
announce our newest grant-funded project. Our physicians have
elected to begin work on decreasing the variation surrounding
the treatment of heart failure in West Virginia. The study group
held a planning retreat June 2004 to look at other heart failure
projects currently in place across the country, to hear presentations
from the leaders of those projects to determine what lessons
they have learned and finally to plan and design the scope of
the heart failure project we will undertake in West Virginia.
WVHA's
Director of Performance Improvement, Debbie Ruppert, RN will serve
as the Project Director. Other partners in this latest Coalition
effort include: the West Virginia Medical Institute (WVMI); the
WV Bureau for Public Health's Cardiovascular Health program; physician
representation from WV chapters of the American College of Cardiology
(ACC), the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP); the
West Virginia State Medical Association and nursing representation
from several professional societies as well. For the first time,
we have recruited insurers and payors and hospital-based pharmacists
into the planning of our project and look forward to what they
will bring to the group.
The
Heart Failure GAP in the Mountains Project is a multi-phased project
that will optimize the use of evidence based inpatient care with
the ultimate goal of reducing 30 day readmissions and educating
patients on self-management goals to improve quality of life and
shift treatment from the acute into the chronic area by generating
a tool kit based on the American College of Cardiology’s Guidelines
Applied in Practice for Heart Failure patients. The tools will
be used to guide inpatient care and link cardiologists, primary
care physicians and other caregivers of Heart Failure patients
to their outpatient care.
Phase
I will concentrate on acutely decompensated Heart Failure patients
requiring hospitalization. Data for the Heart Failure project
will be the same data used for JCAHO, CMS 7th Scope of Work and
voluntary Quality Initiatives.
Heart
Failure accounts for approximately 1,000,000 hospital admissions
each year. US Hospitalizations for acute decomponsated heart failure
have increased from 377,000 in 1979 to 999,999 in 2000. Heart
Failure is the leading cause of admission in persons over 65 years
of age. Considering that the average US hospital loses $1,288
per heart failure patient admission, one can read to see how this
is draining our valuable health care resources and straining the
current health care system.
If
you would like more information on this project, or would like
to nominate a professional from your hospital to participate please
contact Debbie Ruppert at (304) 344-9744 ext. 1729 or by email
at druppert@wvha.org
Downloads:
CVH
Resource Manual/Toolkit
Standing
orders for admission, critical pathways, discharge instructions,
discharge check sheets modeled after sample documents.
(zipped file)
|
