A process improvement program significantly improved the quality of care on six of seven guideline-recommended care measures in the largest U.S. outpatient heart failure clinical study. Twenty-four month findings from IMPROVE HF, (The Registry to Improve the Use of Evidence-Based Heart Failure Therapies in the Outpatient Setting), funded by Medtronic, Inc. (NYSE: MDT), demonstrated that clinics using the process improvement program increased adherence to evidence-based, guideline-recommended care by 82 and 62 percent, respectively, for cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT) and implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD) use, and 80 percent for aldosterone antagonist use, all relative to baseline results. Use of angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors (ACE inhibitors), angiotensin receptor blockers (ARB), beta blockers and heart failure education also showed significant improvement.
IMPROVE HF is the first of its kind, large-scale, prospective study involving approximately 35,000 heart failure patients from 167 U.S. cardiology practices. All study data were collected and analyzed by an independent clinical research organization. Results were presented today as a late breaking clinical trial at the 13th Annual Scientific Meeting of the Heart Failure Society of America (HFSA) in Boston.
“These compelling results serve as a call to action for the need to transform heart failure care delivery in the outpatient practice setting,” said Gregg C. Fonarow, M.D., co-chair of the IMPROVE HF Scientific Steering Committee and Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine at the University of California at Los Angeles. “By monitoring care and applying a practice-specific performance improvement system to better meet guideline recommendations, cardiology practices can markedly increase the quality of care for their heart failure patients.”
With a primary endpoint of 20 percent relative improvement on at least two of the seven quality measures (of which four were on drug therapy, two on device therapy and another on heart failure education), IMPROVE HF 24-month data showed significant improvement on six of the seven measures. Full results include: