Institute for Healthcare Improvement
Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
Much work has been done by many organizations to improve the care delivered to individuals who are hospitalized with heart failure. This Guide aims to build on the promising work in the hospital setting by applying known best practices to the outpatient care of individuals with heart failure, and by highlighting the high-leverage opportunities for improvement in office practices.
The Guide includes the following:
- Key Components of High Quality Outpatient Heart Failure Care
- How to Get Started: Improvement Methods (including example tests of change)
- Suggested Measures, Tools, and Resources
Background
Support for this publication was provided by a grant from the Rx Foundation.
The Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI), with the support of the Rx Foundation, engaged expert clinical faculty and health care improvement advisors to identify, from best practice and published evidence, a core set of high-leverage changes that could achieve meaningful improvements in the ambulatory care of patients living with heart failure.
The project on which this Guide is based was conducted with the specific goal of improving the experience and quality of care for individuals with heart failure, that is, to reduce the cycle of potentially avoidable hospitalizations and rehospitalizations.
