Clinical & Experimental Cardiology
Open Access

Reducing heart failure exacerbation through self-management

8^th Cardiovascular Nursing & Nurse Practitioners Meeting

August 08-09, 2016 Las Vegas, USA

Christy Cotner

California Baptist University, USA

Posters & Accepted Abstracts: J Clin Exp Cardiology

Abstract :

In 2014, the United States spent three trillion dollars in health care, an increase of 5% from 2013. 50% of the total expenditures are concentrated among just 5% of the population. This highly concentrated spending is centered on patients >65 years of age with at least one chronic disease, heart disease being the most common. Preventable 30 days readmission for the diagnosis of heart failure is a significant burden on the nation��?s healthcare system. Many initiatives have focused on the acute hospital side, but there continues to be a gap of care from hospital to home. Across the nation the rate of 30 days hospital readmission is 24.5%. So the questions remains that what can we do as nurses to improve the outpatient care for our heart failure patients? I have been a nurse for 18 years and much of that time has been focused on managing patients with chronic disease. In 2006, I launched an innovative emergency room case management program that focused on redirecting patient that needed symptom management and not the resources used in the acute care setting. In an effort to use what I have learned in the acute care setting and transfer it to the outpatient setting, I returned to school for a nurse practitioner license. After I graduated, I started to work at a large multi-clinic practice. Shortly after, I took on the challenge of converting the clinic into a medical home. However, the success of the medical home did not improve patient satisfaction and reduce the number of readmissions that the clinic had initially hoped for. Despite the transformation, there continued to be a gap in the delivery of care from hospital to the primary care providers. In efforts to close the gap, I developed a nurse-practitioner heart failure program within the clinic. The program focuses on self-management, medication reconciliation, early follow-up and education for the patients. The program is constantly evolving and we have found patient��?s satisfaction has increased, and the 30 days hospital readmissions are decreasing.

Biography :

Email: ccotner@calbaptist.edu