Congestive heart failure is the number one DRG for hospitalization and consumes significant health care resources.  In addition, heart failure patients often demonstrate poor compliance with their care plans and recommended behaviors, which leads to repeat hospital admissions.

The overall goal of the Heart Failure Resource Center (HFRC) model is to improve heart failure patients' health-related quality of life through improvement in their self-management skills and reduction of hospitalizations.

In 2005, shortly after achieving their first Disease Specific Care Certification for Heart Failure, the Fuqua Heart Center pulled together two registered nurses from the acute care setting and two advance practice nurses from an outpatient heart failure case management program to evaluate the hospital’s effectiveness in managing patients with heart failure.  The consensus was that the staff involved with heart failure care could be more effective.  The existing efforts consisted of two advanced practice nurses (APNs) functioning as outpatient clinical case managers for the most high-risk heart failure patients, a single clinical case manager dedicated to heart failure, and the CV division quality manager.  The existing outpatient case management model, consisting of home-based assessment and care, was inherently limited in the numbers of patients that could be managed due to the small numbers of patients and geography that could be served by the two APNs.

Fuqua staff thought an outpatient clinic dedicated to heart failure patients would provide a cost effective way to affect the care of more patients and to increase the level of services provided. The goal was to reduce heart failure hospital admissions, specifically re-admissions.