NCT03724695

Advanced Heart Care at Home

Advanced Heart Care at Home (AHCAH); a Pragmatic Randomized Trial for Clinicians Nudged to AHCAH, a Heart Failure Specific Home Palliative Care Services

• Status: Completed
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 709 (actual)
• Sponsor: University of Pennsylvania · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 18 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Not accepted

Summary

End-of-life (EOL) care for heart failure (HF) patients includes high healthcare utilization and costs, in part due to the lack of integration of optimal HF management and home-based palliative care. In a pilot quality improvement project of clinician "nudges" to enroll seriously ill HF patients in a home-based, integrated HF and palliative care platform, the investigators demonstrated decreased healthcare utilization and costs and increased hospice utilization among seriously ill HF patients. The investigators propose a pragmatic randomized trial for clinicians of seriously ill HF patients admitted to three University of Pennsylvania Health System Hospitals, randomly assigning an opt-in approach (usual care) versus a "nudge" or opt-out approach of a visit from an Advanced Heart Care at Home (AHCAH) liaison to clinicians of eligible patients to discuss and enroll in the AHCAH program, to rigorously and scientifically evaluate clinical, utilization, and cost outcomes among high-risk HF patients at the EOL, and to promote physician uptake of best practices.

Conditions

• Palliative Care
• Heart Failure
• Health Care Utilization
• Quality Improvement

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
OTHER	Clinician nudge or opt out approach for AHCAH liaison visit	This study is a "nudge" or opt-out approach of an AHCAH liaison visit to eligible seriously ill HF patients prior to hospital discharge to discuss the AHCAH program and to subsequently facilitate enrolling them in the AHCAH program if they are amenable, compared to the opt-in approach (usual care).

Timeline

• Start date: 2018-11-13
• Primary completion: 2024-10-29
• Completion: 2024-10-29
• First posted: 2018-10-30
• Last updated: 2026-01-26

Locations

1 site across 1 country: United States