How to develop a national heart failure clinics network: a consensus document of the Hellenic Heart Failure Association

Abstract

Heart failure (HF) is rapidly growing, conferring considerable mortality, morbidity, and costs. Dedicated HF clinics improve patient outcomes, and the development of a national HF clinics network aims at addressing this need at national level. Such a network should respect the existing health care infrastructures, and according to the capacities of hosting facilities, it can be organized into three levels. Establishing the continuous communication and interaction among the components of the network is crucial, while supportive actions that can enhance its efficiency include involvement of multidisciplinary health care professionals, use of structured HF-specific documents, such as discharge notes, patient information leaflets, and patient booklets, and implementation of an HF-specific electronic health care record and database platform.

Keywords: Discharge letter; Electronic health care record; Heart failure; Heart failure clinics; Heart failure network; Multidisciplinary team.

Figure 1

A proposed scheme for the design of a heart failure care network.