Cost-effective care a phone call away: a nurse-managed telephonic program for patients with chronic heart failure.

Health care providers and health care systems are challenged to find cost-effective ways to address the costs associated with heart failure. A multidisciplinary team of nurses, physicians, pharmacists, and dieticians was assembled at New Hanover Regional Medical Center (Wilmington, NC) to develop strategies to decrease the readmission rate without compromising patient care. The team developed a disease management program that included comprehensive inpatient education, as well as an outpatient telephonic program to reinforce education after discharge. Goals were to reduce readmissions of patients with heart failure, to decrease the cost per case of each patient with chronic heart failure, and to reduce the length of stay for patients who were readmitted. The CHF Telephonic Program was extremely successful in meeting patient-focused and organizational goals related to readmissions, length of stay, and cost of care.