Strategies That Increase the Use of Cardiac Rehabilitation for Patients with Heart Failure

Presented by: Tara Lagu, MD, MPH; Patrick Schilling, BS, ACSM-CEP, AACVPR-CCRP; Steven J. Keteyian, Phd; Sherrie Khadanga, MD; and Carol Haywood, PhD, OTR/L

1.25 AACVPR CEUs

Academic and clinical experts in cardiology, cardiac rehabilitation (CR) and organizational management participated as a team in an NIH study focused on increasing the uptake of CR among patients with heart failure (HF). These experts identified the most pervasive barriers to CR for patients with HF and the most promising strategies to increase the use of CR for patients with HF. In this exciting presentation, recorded as a component of the 2023 Annual Meeting, faculty and experts who participated in the project will discuss the barriers that are preventing patients with HF from being recruited to, enrolling in, and completing CR and the strategies that can address these barriers. Drs. Pack and Lagu will first highlight prior work that has identified organizational factors that may contribute; common transitions and points in time when patients get lost to follow-up; and opportunities for local and national improvement. Ms. Schafer will describe the process of bringing together experts and identifying the highest priority strategies and barriers. Following this, the panel (including prior presenters plus Drs. Khadanga, Keteyian, D'Aunno) will discuss how these barriers might be preventing patients with HF who are eligible for your own CR program from attending and will identify the strategies that participants agreed were the most feasible and effective for increasing CR use in this population. An expert in organizational change (Dr. D'Aunno) will also discuss how CR programs across the country are implementing process improvement strategies via an on-going learning collaborative (results of this collaborative coming to AACVPR 2024!). Discussion among session panelists and attendees will focus on reflections about how this work might drive local and national CR practice improvement, increase enrollment numbers for patients with HF, and inspire future research directions.

Learning Objectives:

1. To discuss prior work that has identified common barriers and effective strategies to increase the use of CR for patients with HF.

2. To describe unique expert-identified barriers to patients with HF and help attendees understand how these barriers might be presenting in their own programs.

3. To discuss expert-identified strategies that allow CR programs to improve the referral, enrollment, and retention of patients with HF.

4. To discuss how participants in a real-world learning collaborative are identifying and targeting individual local barriers and using expert-identified strategies to overcome them to increase CR use among patients with HF.

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