UCLA

Introduction: A quarter of patients hospitalized for heart failure either die or are re-hospitalized within 30 days. Optimization of guideline directed medical therapy (GDMT) has been shown to decrease both mortality and hospital readmissions. Methods: We used an existing heart failure clinical dashboard registry at our Veterans Affairs (VA) hospital to determine the rates of hospitalization from any medical cause and GDMT prescription rates from November to December 2022. We performed a retrospective chart review to validate dashboard results. Results: Twenty-nine patients in the registry were hospitalized within the last 30 days, with 5 patients excluded due to ongoing hospitalization; 19 were classified as heart failure with reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF, LVEF ≤ 40%), 4 as heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (LVEF ≥ 50%), and 2 unknown (no EF in 3 years). The rates of quadruple GDMT was 16% in all heart failure patients and 21% in patients with HFrEF (table 1). We performed a root cause analysis of low GDMT rates (figure 1). We used this data to secure buy-in from hospitalist medicine and cardiology to support a full-time cardiology pharmacist to screen all currently admitted patients with HFrEF. We created a standardized note template that gives recommendations for GDMT optimization prior to discharge. Conclusions: Although there is strong evidence that GDMT improves patient outcomes, many recently hospitalized patients are not optimized even after accounting for relative contraindications. We demonstrate that using tools such as a clinical dashboard and problem visualization with quality improvement methodology can both make GDMT optimization more tangible and also create buy-in from the health system to implement change.