Developing a heart failure unit and ambulatory care pathway

Heart failure affects as many as 875 000 in the UK and is responsible for 1 million inpatient bed-days per year. These admissions are expected to rise due to the aging population and to survival rates following myocardial infarction. There is well-documented evidence that there is a lack of resources and coordinated health care services in chronic heart failure and available therapeutic strategies are underutilized. Barriers to optimal treatments are numerous, stemming from patients, physicians and health-care systems, and result in considerable human and financial consequences. One remedy for this is to streamline the patient pathway and to consider allocation of hospital space, so that more facilities are dedicated to the proper care of chronic heart failure patients where adequate therapies and interventions can be administered along with adequate discharge planning to reduce length of stay and reduce hospital readmission. This article discusses the process of developing a new pathway for heart failure patients in a tertiary care centre.