Abstract
Objective: Improve angiotensin receptor-neprilysin inhibitor (ARNI) utilization among patients admitted with acute decompensated heart failure (HF) through a multidisciplinary quality improvement (QI) intervention. Background: ARNIs reduce mortality and hospitalizations for patients with HF and abnormal systolic function; current guidelines recommend them as first-line agents for Stage C HF. Inpatient initiation of ARNIs during an acute exacerbation is cost-effective and safe. Despite this, ARNI utilization remains low nationally and at our center. Methods: We implemented a multidisciplinary QI intervention at a large urban Veterans Affairs (VA) medical center. The intervention included electronic health record system redesign to provide clinical decision support, a new pharmacy-led screening process and recommendation system to the primary inpatient team, and an educational campaign. Our primary outcome metric was monthly ARNI initiation rate, defined as the number of new ARNI initiations divided by the number of eligible patients admitted for an acute HF exacerbation. We used a statistical process control (XmR) chart to measure change. Results: We observed a statistically significant, non-random improvement in mean monthly ARNI initiation rate from 8.4% pre-intervention to 35.7% post-intervention. An XmR chart is shown in Figure 1. Split limits analysis showed variation post-intervention was within statistical control, suggesting sustainable change. Conclusions: Our outcomes demonstrate successful implementation of a multidisciplinary intervention to improve ARNI utilization among patients admitted with acute decompensated HF at a large VA medical center. ARNI initiation rate increased significantly post-intervention, and the split limits analysis suggests that our results represent sustainable change. A longer period of data collection will be useful to assess HF readmission and mortality rates in response to this intervention.
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