Group Medical Visits in Heart Failure

The primary goal of this proposal is to improve the quality of care and outcomes for patients discharged with heart failure using an innovative multidisciplinary group intervention approach. Heart failure is a complex chronic illness where comprehensive patient-centered care is difficult and resource intensive. One potential solution is to use shared medical appointments (SMA), where a group of patients with the same disease process shared the same medical or clinic appointment. This can be provided by a multi-disciplinary team of providers with expertise in nutrition, nursing, behavior and medication management join to manage heart failure. The investigators will enroll patients from Providence, Cleveland and Phoenix VA Hospitals who were within 12 weeks of discharge from a heart failure hospitalization and/or an outpatient encounter (clinic, emergent or urgent care) that required IV diuretic therapy. Patients were randomized them to receive SMA intervention or usual care. Results from this project are expected to add an innovative intervention that could improve outcomes important for both the patient and the VA: health status, hospitalizations, and mortality.