Optimizing heart failure pathways to enhance patient care: the Program to Optimize Heart Failure Patient Pathways...

Area of Science:

• Cardiology
• Healthcare Management
• Public Health

Background:

• European healthcare providers face challenges implementing integrated, multidisciplinary heart failure (HF) care pathways.
• The European Society of Cardiology recommends specific guidelines for HF management that are not consistently adopted.
• The PRO-HF program was developed to assist clinicians in evaluating and improving their HF patient pathways.

Purpose of the Study:

• To assess the current state of HF pathways in 10 European hospitals.
• To identify strengths, gaps, and areas for improvement in HF patient care.
• To support the development of tailored interventions for pathway optimization.

Main Methods:

• Baseline assessments involved holistic appraisals of HF services using a comprehensive checklist.
• Data collection included digital surveys for HF care teams and one-to-one interviews.
• Assessments covered four key areas: outpatient clinics, remote management, device implantation/inpatient pathways, and network maximization.

Main Results:

• Key areas for improvement identified across hospitals include HF specialist care provision, data capture and analysis, institutional care protocols, hospital-wide strategies, and multidisciplinary teams (MDTs).
• Suboptimal specialist care for emergency inpatients was noted in all hospitals.
• Lack of clear protocols and understaffed MDTs contributed to variability in care and hindered the adoption of new technologies like remote patient monitoring.

Conclusions:

• The PRO-HF program effectively identifies significant gaps and shortcomings in European hospital HF pathways.
• Preliminary results from hospitals implementing suggested changes are encouraging.
• Longer-term follow-up is necessary to fully ascertain the impact of PRO-HF on HF pathway optimization and patient outcomes.