Heart Failure: Readmissions down 66%

University Hospitals of North Midlands (UHNM) using Florence by Generated Health demonstrates a 45% reduction in hospital readmissions and a whopping 66% reduction in emergency care readmissions.

Using Florence, UHNM’s heart failure team recruited patients to use digital messaging services to help them understand and manage their own condition with confidence at home, and help avoid a visit to A&E or readmission to the hospital.

The ‘Smart with your Heart’ initiative was launched under the programme ‘NHS Testbeds Wave 2’, an ambitious programme that brings together innovators, industry and the NHS to tackle some of the biggest challenges in healthcare.

The project was evaluated against the ‘usual care’ that heart failure patients would receive using multiple data sources including routinely collected service data in hospitals, in GP surgeries, in the community heart failure nurse service, quality of life measures, patient activation measures, patient satisfaction surveys, health economic modelling.

THE OUTCOMES

In comparison to a usual care hospitalised group:

• The project significantly reduces readmissions to hospitals at 3 and 6 months post-discharge.
• The project significantly reduces readmissions to A & E at 30 days, 3 and 6 months following hospital discharge.

Project patients n=58. Usual care patients n=537

THE SAVINGS

The “Smart with your Heart” independent health economic evaluation project was cost-efficient and cost-effective. It shows a return on investment of $1.45 to $3.63 for each $1 invested. If these figures were more generalised and applied to one tenth of the $1 billion invested nationally in acute heart failure yearly then this would equate to a net $130,000,000 to $326,000,000 ‘saving’ with a $108,000,000 investment.

Award ‘Driving Efficiency through Technology’

Based on the excellent results, the team at UHNM was awarded the prestigious Health Service Journal award for Driving Efficiency through Technology Award.