Veterans Affairs Lowering Readmission in Heart Failure (VALOR in HF)
Heart Failure
About this trial
This is an interventional treatment trial for Heart Failure focused on measuring heart failure, quality of life, readmissions
Eligibility Criteria
Inclusion Criteria:
- All patients admitted with either systolic or diastolic HF will be identified through ongoing daily prospective manual search of admission records in VA NYHHS
- Men and women ( 21 years) being discharged after a HF admission will be eligible
- They must have an available phone
Exclusion Criteria:
- Patients with poor short-term survival (< 3 months)
- recent major surgery (< 1 month)
- planned discharge to a long-term-care facility
- severe dementia or other serious psychiatric illness
- temporarily in the area
- those unable to provide consent, refusal to participate
- logistic or discretionary reasons (including participation in another study) will be excluded
Sites / Locations
- VA New York Harbor Health Care System
Arms of the Study
Arm 1
Arm 2
No Intervention
Active Comparator
Current Best Practice (CBP)
Quality improvement program (QIP)
CBP received no intervention and only current best practices for inpatient HF care.
Comprehensive quality improvement program (QIP) intervenes on patient, provider and system levels. The QIP will consist of 3 monthly phone calls to promote diet and medication adherence using the transtheoretical model as a behavioral framework and checklists to facilitate patients' self-monitoring of their diet, physical activity, weight and medication taking. Further, providers during the posttest phase will use checklists for inpatient and outpatient care of HF patients.