Disease Management for Chronic Congestive Heart Failure

The dilemma of the high cost of quality health care in a managed care environment for chronic disease populations has led to the development of a nurse-managed chronic care clinic that focuses on outpatient case management of chronic diseases beginning with chronic heart failure patients. The clinic provides advanced practice nurse management for heart failure patients in pharmacotherapy, education, counseling, dietary and lipid management, and exercise training via software management programs. The clinic is developing further management for comorbidity factors such as diabetes and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. The history, development, and function of the clinic are reviewed.