The design of the Dashboard Activated Services and Telehealth for Heart Failure (DASH-HF) study: A pragmatic quality improvement randomized implementation trial for patients with heart failure with reduced ejection fraction

Abstract

BackgroundGaps in the receipt and dosing of guideline-directed medical therapy (GDMT) persist for patients with heart failure with reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF) [1]. In 2020, the Veterans Affairs (VA) developed a heart failure (HF) specific population dashboard to monitor care quality and performance on standard HFrEF performance measures [2]. MethodsThe Dashboard Activated Services and Telehealth for HF (DASH-HF) study is a pragmatic randomized quality improvement study designed to evaluate the utility of proactive population management clinics using the VA's HF dashboard to optimize GDMT for patients with HFrEF. Panel management telemedicine clinics incorporated multidisciplinary clinicians to perform chart review and impromptu telephone encounters to evaluate current HFrEF management and opportunities to optimize GDMT. The study will evaluate the efficacy of proactive panel management to usual care at 6 months as quantified by the GDMT optimization potential score. Secondary outcomes include hospitalizations, mortality, and clinician time per intervention. The study completed enrollment and randomization of 300 participants. The intervention was performed from September to December 2021. ConclusionDASH-HF will contribute to the literature by evaluating use of the existing VA dashboard to identify HF patients with the lowest adherence to GDMT and proactively target this group for the intervention.Registration:https://clinicaltrials.gov/. Unique identifier: NCT05001165.