The Healthcare Commission’s work on heart failure in 2005/2006

The Healthcare Commission is undertaking two separate but complementary strands of work to address the quality and effectiveness of care for patients with heart failure as part of the 2005/2006 annual health check, as follows:

• a review of admissions management as part of the acute hospital portfolio work with heart failure as a tracer condition
• an improvement review of services for people with heart failure

This briefing paper seeks to summarise the differences in the nature and purpose of the two pieces of work, and demonstrate how they link together to provide a more rounded assessment of services for heart failure patients.

How do the heart failure improvement review and admissions management reviews link together

The acute hospital portfolio is focussing on admissions management using heart failure as a tracer condition, whereas the heart failure improvement review is focussing on all aspects of the care pathway for patients with heart failure, part of which considers the care given to patients in hospital.

Data collected for the acute hospitals portfolio heart failure survey will provide valuable local data on admissions management, and will also inform the heart failure improvement review. Using the same data in both reviews provides a more valuable integrated data set and reduces the overall burden of data collection on trusts.

The acute hospitals portfolio survey of heart failure admissions provides a snap shot of care processes for a sample of patients, whereas the heart failure improvement review aims to describe the care offered to all patients with heart failure in a local community.

Results from the admissions management review were published in 2006 and can be accessed via the following link:

Acute hospitals portfolio survey of heart failure

Results from the heart failure review were published in 2007 and can be accessed via the following link:

Improvement review of heart failure

You can access further information on both of these strands of work, including details of the scheduled reports and outputs, by clicking on the following links:

More information on the heart failure improvement review

More information on the acute hospital portoflio

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