Transitional Care Interventions to Reduce Readmission in Patients with Heart Failure

Abstract

Heart failure affects millions of people in the United States and serves as a significant economic burden on the health care system. The chronic nature of illness serves as a challenge for heart failure patients to manage their symptoms, resulting in hospitalization and readmission. The purpose of the project is to assess the effects of transitional care interventions in reducing readmission among heart failure patients. The inquiry will focus on individualized patient education using teach-back method and telephone follow-up in the transitional care interventions to enhance the self-care abilities and reduce readmissions in patients with heart failure. A quasi experimental, one group, pre-test, and post-test design with a sample of 40 patients received the transitional care interventions at a cardiology outpatient setting. The self-care of heart failure index version 6.2 was used to measure self-care ability and reduce readmission in six-months. The project results support the evidence that transitional care interventions aid in reducing heart failure related readmission. The heart failure readmission rate for the participants in the project was reduced by 5% at the end of six-months. Reducing heart failure-related readmission by improving self-care ability promotes quality of life, enhances satisfaction, and reduces health care cost.