The Nurse Practitioner Run Multidisciplinary Heart Failure Clinic

Statement of Problem Patients with heart failure experience high numbers of hospital admissions, readmissions and emergency department visits due to poor or unmanaged HF. The proposed intervention of a Nurse Practitioner run heart failure clinic that would provide adult Hispanic patients with heart failure with clinical assessments, medication management, treatment for related heart failure complications, disease management, and diet and lifestyle modification education will reduce the numbers of hospital admissions, readmissions and emergency room visits. With the Nurse Practitioner run clinics managing the heart failure patients’ medications and care, and increasing health care knowledge and family involvement in the plan of care, patient quality of life and health status will increase and depression will decrease. This will decrease the costs and loss of revenue due to admissions and readmissions for heart failure, and emergency department use, increase quality of life, and decrease the incidence of depression in this patient population. Hence, a nurse practitioner run heart failure clinic in Southern California will provide an invaluable service that is at this time unavailable to many patients. Sources of Data An aggregate of adult Hispanic patients with the diagnosis of heart failure will be the sample that data will be collected from. Data will include demographic information, health status information including laboratory results. In addition, participants will complete the Minnesota Living with Heart Failure and Beck Depression instruments and item responses will be included as data sources.