Implementation of the Hospital to Home (H2H) Heart Failure Initiative

This study determines if a community of practice of clinicians and quality improvement specialists can be used to implement a national quality initiative known as Hospital to Home (H2H). This quality initative is designed to reduced readmission rates for patients with heart failure or heart attack by improving the transition of care upon discharge.

Study Overview

• Status: Completed
• Conditions: Heart Failure
• Intervention / Treatment: Other: Usual Care; Other: Community of Practice Facilitation

• Study Type: Interventional
• Enrollment (Anticipated): 122
• Phase: Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

Study Locations

• United States
  • California
    • Palo Alto, California, United States, 94304
      • VA Palo Alto Health Care System

Participation Criteria

Eligibility Criteria

• Ages Eligible for Study: Child; Adult; Older Adult
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: No
• Genders Eligible for Study: All

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

• VA medical centers are the unit of randomization. A medical center will be included if had at least 20 patients discharged with a principal diagnosis of heart failure in 2008

Study Plan

How is the study designed?

Design Details

• Primary Purpose: Health Services Research
• Allocation: Randomized
• Interventional Model: Parallel Assignment
• Masking: Single

Number of Arms

2

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm	Intervention / Treatment
Experimental: Community of Practice Facilitation; Medical Centers assigned to this arm will recieive the communtiy of practice facilitation. In this process we will contact existing members of the community of practice (called the Heart Failure Network) at the facility as well as attempt to identify new providers and other staff at the facility with an interest in improving heart failure care. The facilitation includes: describing the national H2H program, providing talking points and strategies for local providers to obtain support from their local facility to initiate local projects related to H2H, providing a forum for successful sites to describe how they initiated projects to sites yet to initiate projects.	Other: Community of Practice Facilitation
Experimental: Usual Care; Medical centers in this arm will hear of H2H through usual routs (calls with facilty Directors and Chiefs of staff).	Other: Usual Care

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
H2H enrollment	H2H enrollment by the facility as determined by the H2H program of the American College of Cardiology and Institute for Healthcare Improvement	6 months

Secondary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
quality improvement programs initiated due to H2H	A new quality improvement initiated that addressess one of the 3 areas of H2H focus. These include, medication reconcilliation, early follow-up after discharge, and symptom recognition.	6 months

Collaborators and Investigators

• Sponsor: VA Palo Alto Health Care System

Study record dates

Study Major Dates

• Study Start: January 1, 2010
• Primary Completion (Actual): July 1, 2013
• Study Completion (Actual): July 1, 2013

Study Registration Dates

• First Submitted: February 12, 2013
• First Submitted That Met QC Criteria: May 27, 2014
• First Posted (Estimate): May 28, 2014

Study Record Updates

• Last Update Posted (Estimate): May 28, 2014
• Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria: May 27, 2014
• Last Verified: February 1, 2013

More Information

Terms related to this study

• Additional Relevant MeSH Terms: Heart Diseases; Cardiovascular Diseases; Heart Failure
• Other Study ID Numbers: SDP-09-160