The results of a randomized trial of a quality improvement intervention in the care of patients with heart failure

Quality of life assessment in heart failure interventions: a 10-year (1996–2005) review

“…The most frequently used measure was Cantril's 'Ladder of Life' (three studies) [27,60,61]. Health-related measures were used in 46 studies.…”

“…Nine of the interventions reported no significant QoL effect [27,60,65,77,130,143,157,160,176]. Ojeda and colleagues [126] completed a 12-month follow-up of a study reporting beneficial effects of a discharge intervention and found that the benefits were not present at followup.…”

What Can a Pilot Congestive Heart Failure Disease Management Program Tell Us about Likely Return on Investment?: A Case Study from a Program Offered to Federal Employees

“…16 A review of 16 studies found that CHF programs often resulted in decreased hospitalization. 17 While most disease management programs for CHF seem to work by reducing hospital length of stay or readmission rates, 12,18 the impact is not always statistically significant 19 and the success of these programs may be a function of the types of patients enrolled and the severity of their illnesses. 9,20 In our analysis, we stratified program participants by risk status and controlled for differences in comorbidities.…”

Performance Feedback

“…In an attempt to provide benchmarks for HF treatment, recommendations for the management of patients with HF were published as early as 1994 (4). Soon afterward, it became apparent that treatment of HF did not change as a result of publication of these guidelines (5)(6)(7). These results are consistent with data showing that health care practitioners tend to overestimate the degree to which they adhere to guideline-based therapy (8).…”