Home-based intervention in congestive heart failure: Long-term implications on readmission and survival

© 2002 American Heart Association. All rights reserved.BackgroundIt is not known to what extent initially observed benefits of postdischarge programs of care for patients with chronic congestive heart failure (CHF) in respect to event-free survival, readmissions, and healthcare costs persist in the long term. Methods and Results- We prospectively studied the long-term effects of a multidisciplinary home-based intervention (HBI) in a cohort of CHF patients randomly allocated to either to HBI (n=149) or usual care (n=148). During a median of 4.2 years of follow-up, there were significantly fewer primary end points (unplanned readmission or death) in the HBI versus usual care group: a mean of 0.21 versus 0.37 primary events per patient per month (PConclusionsThe beneficial effects of HBI in reducing frequency of unplanned readmissions in CHF patients persist in the long term and are associated with prolongation of survival.Simon Stewart, John D. Horowit