REDUCING HEART FAILURE READMISSIONS
Article provided by Philips Healthcare
P Image © Philips Healthcare
hilips Research is developing an experimental clinical decision support system aimed at reducing
the number of heart failure patients who are periodically readmitted to the hospital for further treatment. By providing busy doctors and nurses with advanced tools to help them plan the right moment for discharge and select an appropriate post-discharge management plan, and by providing patients with a personalized education program to help them self-manage their condition, the system aims to reduce the risk of readmission. Potential benefits include a better quality of life for patients and reduced healthcare costs.
CAUSES OF READMISSION Many patients suffering from heart failure require frequent readmission to hospital. This is often due to a rapid and potentially life-threatening deterioration in their condition. In the USA today, around 25% of heart failure patients are re-admitted within 30 days of discharge, while 50% are readmitted within a year. Although some of these readmissions are for scheduled or unrelated events, around 50% are deemed to be preventable.
DISCHARGE PLANNING The Philips experimental system is designed to provide a status overview of all the heart failure patients in a hospital unit to help time-pressured care teams with clinical treatment planning and timely discharge of each patient. It also checks that all the necessary procedures for discharge have been carried out and are properly documented on the system.
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RISK ASSESSMENT Using the data stored in each patient’s records, the system generates a ‘risk of readmission’ score for each patient with the aim of helping care teams to decide on the level of support the patient will need when he or she returns home. Based on the computed risk for readmission and the patient’s situation at home the best possible care plan can be composed. Dependent on the required level of care, this plan may consist of a visit schedule to the Heart Failure clinic, a home telemonitoring service, and regular home visits by the community nurse or general practitioner.
PATIENT-TAILORED EDUCATION To enable patients to partially self-manage their heart failure, Philips’ experimental system is also designed to assist in educating patients about their heart failure and what they must do at home in order to manage it so that sudden deteriorations are less likely to occur. These highly personalized education programmes, which could be delivered via
each patient’s bedside infotainment console, could help to avoid the situation where patient education is left to a busy nurse during the hours immediately before discharge.
EMPOWERING PATIENTS By minimizing the risk of readmission, a future clinical decision support system could both benefit patients and significantly help to reduce healthcare costs. The benefits for patients could go beyond simply ensuring that they stay out of hospital for longer. By giving them the reassurance that everything has been done to minimize their risk and by better educating them about their condition, it could empower them to take greater responsibility for self-management of their disease, making their lives and those of their carers much less stressful. ■
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MORE INFO The research prototype is available for viewing at the Arab Health Exhibition & Congress. Visit Philips Healthcare in Sheikh Saeed Hall 2, stand number S2G10 to find out more about this new technology.
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