Advanced Heart Care at Home

Completed · Not applicable

Conditions studied: Palliative Care, Heart Failure, Health Care Utilization, Quality Improvement

In brief

End-of-life (EOL) care for heart failure (HF) patients includes high healthcare utilization and costs, in part due to the lack of integration of optimal HF management and home-based palliative care. In a pilot quality improvement project of clinician "nudges" to enroll seriously ill HF patients in a home-based, integrated HF and palliative care platform, the investigators demonstrated decreased healthcare utilization and costs and increased hospice utilization among seriously ill HF patients. The investigators propose a pragmatic randomized trial for clinicians of seriously ill HF patients admitted to three University of Pennsylvania Health System Hospitals, randomly assigning an opt-in approach (usual care) versus a "nudge" or opt-out approach of a visit from an Advanced Heart Care at Home (AHCAH) liaison to clinicians of eligible patients to discuss and enroll in the AHCAH program, to rigorously and scientifically evaluate clinical, utilization, and cost outcomes among high-risk HF patients at the EOL, and to promote physician uptake of best practices.

Key facts

Study ID

NCT03724695

Run by

University of Pennsylvania

People needed

709

Starts

2018-11-13

Expected to finish

2024-10-29

Last updated by the study team

2026-01-26

Who can join

Age: 18 and older. Sex: any. Healthy volunteers: not accepted.

You may qualify if…

• At least 18 years of age
• Reside within Caring Way's geographic catchment
• Heart Failure ICD code from any previous healthcare encounter (inpatient or outpatient) in the 12 months prior to index hospitalization
• Admitted to a cardiology or hospitalist service
• Palliative Connect score greater than 0.3
• Index hospitalization during study period

You may not qualify if…

• Less than 18 years of age
• Pregnant women
• Incarcerated patients
• Homeless patients
• Reside outside of Caring Way's geographic catchment
• Patients without an identifiable primary physician for AHCAH staff to communicate with as determined by the AHCAH liaison via EPIC
• Prior hospitalization during study period

Where it is running

• Perelman Center for Advanced Medicine — Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States

Full record on ClinicalTrials.gov

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