Hearts INACCtion

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Support Group Kit

We are pleased to introduce our “Hearts in Action” Congestive Heart Failure Support Group Kit which is your personal blueprint for implementing a CHF support group for your patients.We believe that there is a need to underscore the importance of medical management and prevention of heart disease. We also believe that this CHF support group project, through dynamic patient education and support, will help to reduce costs and contribute to patient satisfaction. Please utilize the files on the “Toolkit” tab to personalize this project for your practice and your patients. If you have questions, please contact us.

On behalf of the Indiana Chapter of the American College of Cardiology and our patients with congestive heart failure, we are grateful to the following committee members for developing this program:

Cynthia Adams, RN, MSN, CS
Clifford C. Hallam, MD, FACC
Amy C. Kaissar, MD
Mark A. O’Shaughnessy, MD, FACC
Mary Norine Walsh, MD, FACC
Gwen J. Goldfarb, executive director, Indiana-ACC

Getting Started
Successful support groups require both a nursing facilitator and dynamic patients. It would also be a good idea to include the patient’s spouse/support person in the support group process.Once you have the framework in place, the next step is setting the agendas for your CHF Support Group and identifying a venue at which to hold your meetings. We suggest you publicize your CHF Support Group to your patient base through waiting room literature and by contacting your referring primary care physicians. You may also want to consider submitting a news release to your local media.

We’ve laid the groundwork for you.
Visit the “Toolkit” tab above to see the following:
• Sample brochure that you can personalize for your practice and have printed for your patients.
• Sample letter to send to your referring primary care physicians.
• Sample letter to garner support in your community.
• Sample news release for your local media.
• Sample CHF support group topics and agendas.
• List of recommended CHF educational pieces.

We hope that you find this CHF Support Group Kit to be helpful and meaningful for you and your patients.

Toolkit

Re-Admission Prevention

Heart Failure Patient Re-Admission Prevention

We are pleased to share publicly available resources for heart failure patient re-admission prevention.

Contributed by the Indianapolis Coalition for Patient Safety and its partners: the Indiana Chapter of the American College of Cardiology, the Indiana Hospital Association, and Health Care Excel.

Please review the documents below or go here. Another great resource is H2H.

Articles:

Thirty-Day Readmission Rates for Medicare Beneficiaries by Race and Site of Care

$50 Blood Test Could Predict CHF Readmission Risk

Websites:
Transitions of Care Compendium

Project RED (Re-engineered Discharge)

Upcoming Meetings