NP010 A unit level toolkit to optimize heart failure care across different organizations

Abstract

The prevalence of heart failure is increasing due to our aging population and improvement and diagnosis of myocardial infraction (Johanssen and Strauss, 2003).While heart failure guidelines and clinical pathways have been well published across North America and some of the European countries, there is still some practice variation in the adherence to these guidelines. (NHS Guideline, 2009) Initial research at a Canadian tertiary care centre indicated a 10-20% over the national average for in-hospital mortality for HF patients and 50% over the national average for readmission rates and a higher than the national average LOS. A pilot project to optimize care was initiated and completed on two medical cardiology units focusing on improving team communication, use of the order sets to reduce practice variation and patient education and follow up. Unit level involvement was sought and five key improvement areas were identified. These changes are now being disseminated hospital wide. This presentation will discussed and summarize a toolkit that was used successfully by frontline managers and educators in bringing out the change and improvement in clinical processes at the direct care provider level in order to prioritize and optimize heart failure care. This toolkit is being reviewed as a prototype for other centres wishing to optimize heart failure care.