The Effect of an Outpatient Interdisciplinary Heart Failure Education Program

Heart failure affects 6.6 million adults in the United States at a cost of $39 billion annually. To reduce costs and improve the quality of care, the VA set a national goal to reduce heart failure readmissions by 10% over the next 5 years. A retrospective study was conducted at a Midwest VA medical center comparing hospital readmissions at 30, 60, and 180 days for heart failure patients receiving usual bedside education and those patients attending an additional outpatient interdisciplinary heart failure education class. Results were significant (P = .021) for reducing admissions at 30 days for the interdisciplinary class.