Newsworthy

Heart failure (HF) ranks among the costliest health conditions to treat and takes a tremendous toll on patients’ quality of life and longevity, according to the American Heart Association, the world’s leading voluntary health organization devoted to a world of longer, healthier lives for all. Approximately 6 million Americans live with the condition — a number expected to reach epidemic proportions as the population ages.^[1]

To tackle this growing problem, Stormont Vail Health joined more than two dozen health care systems across the country in the American Heart Association’s IMPLEMENT-HF™ initiative, launched in 2020.

“Stormont Vail joined the American Heart Association’s call, demonstrating our commitment to quality heart failure care,” said Dennis Rausch, BSN, RN, Stormont Vail Cardiovascular Programs Manager. “This national initiative aims to create a health care ecosystem for heart failure that emphasizes implementation science and patient engagement.”

IMPLEMENT-HF will work to bridge communication and coordination between care settings, health care professionals and patients to achieve precise heart failure management and improve outcomes.

The initiative will use established American Heart Association primary data collection approaches, including the Association’s hospital-based Get With The Guidelines^® – Heart Failure program, to identify, implement and evaluate processes to develop new standards for heart failure patient management.

The American Heart Association’s National heart failure initiative, IMPLEMENT-HF, is made possible with funding from founding sponsor, Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation, and national sponsors, Boehringer Ingelheim and Eli Lilly and Company.

For more information about IMPLEMENT-HF, visit www.heart.org/implementhf.

[1] Cardiomyopathy and Heart Failure (Chapter 21). https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/epub/10.1161/CIR.0000000000000950.