Decreasing Heart Failure Admissions

Running Head: HEART FAILURE 1
Decreasing Heart Failure Admissions
Name
Institution

HEART FAILURE 2
The heart failure (HF) burden is such a rising healthcare burden. It is also among the
principal roots of readmission and hospitalizations. The snowballing priority for clinicians some
various stakeholders, as well as researchers has been how to cut down the readmission for the
patients with HF. There are a number of interventions that aimed at improving hospital facility
performance. The interventions also aim at reducing readmissions for the patients on a thirty-day
readmission procedure measure. Although evidence-based therapies for managing HF are
deemed to be proliferated, the constant implementation of the current therapies and growth of
some extra strategies for more efficiently prevent re-admissions in areas that require consistent
development.
The early ambulation (EA) is directly linked with raised outcomes for stroke patients and
those who are mechanically ventilated. It remains unknown as to whether this association exists
for acute heart failure patients. Studies seek to determine whether EA amongst patients who are
hospitalized with HF is connected to the length of stay and discharge disposition, mortality, and
the 30-days post discharge readmissions. The clinical implications are that HF seeks to burden
the system of healthcare with a large number of patients or population incurring multiple
readmissions as well as a long length of staying. Similarly, low cost interventions such as EA
might help in improving their results.
The Healthy People initiative was first launched in 1979 and it was a pioneer effort from
the United States Surgeon General’s office to improve the public’s awareness about the concept
of health. For centuries, the general belief about health was that it was the absence of disease,
and that the primary purpose of health care was to treat the disease once it was present, or active.
With Healthy People, there was a paradigm shift from treatment to prevention, with an emphasis
on empowering the community to improve such things as collaboration, education, and

HEART FAILURE 3
disparities. Healthy People 2020 is the fourth 10-year plan that establishes health objectives and
develops tools to measure the progress made towards specific goals (Healthy People, 2013).
Healthy People 2020 includes over 40 topics that are further divided into specific
objectives. For this paper, I chose the topic “Heart Disease and Stroke” because I have worked
as a direct care registered nurse in a telemetry floor for almost six years. The patient population
that I am familiar with suffering from chronic comorbidities like hypertension, diabetes,
coronary artery disease, renal insufficiency, peripheral vascular disease, dyslipidemia and heart
failure. Of special interest to me is objective HDS-24.1: “Reduce hospitalizations of adults aged
65-74 years with heart failure as the principal diagnosis” (Healthy People, 2013).
According to the Healthy People 2020 website, the goal is to decrease hospitalizations of
adults aged 65-74 with the principal diagnosis of heart failure from the baseline 2007 data of 9.8
per 1000 population to 8.8 per 1000 population by the year 2020. Because it is a chronic illness
that exists with other comorbidities and affects a large number of those over 65 years of age, HF
has a huge impact on the nation’s Medicare program. “Congestive heart failure (CHF) is deemed
the crucial cause of hospitalization in the Medicare program, and triggered almost nearly 1.4
million hospitalizations and seventeen billion dollars in total expenditure in 2007 alone” (Joynt
et al., 2014). The current annual health care cost for HF is 39 billion dollars (Gerdes & Lorenz,
2013).
In a retrospective cohort study, Joynt, Orav and Jha (2014) used data from national
Medicare claims between 2006 and 2007 to determine what kind of relationship, if any, existed
amongst hospital patient volume and patient outcome and costs for CHF patients. The objective
of the study was to identify the practices used by the more successful institutions in order to help
improve CHF patient care and outcome. The study concluded that “experience with CHF