Population Health Management for Congestive Heart Failure

Population Health Management for Congestive Heart Failure
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Population Health Management for Congestive Heart Failure
The prevalence of congestive heart failure (CHF) is rising significantly due to a growth in the aging population. Moreover, it is associated with high mortality and high healthcare costs due to high hospital readmission rates (Takeda et al., 2019). Thus, it is important to identify services and interventions that can help address the healthcare needs of an older population with CHF. Furthermore, such interventions and services should be cost-effective. This paper explores services and interventions that a population health nurse working with this particular population can implement to help address health promotion, risk management, care coordination, and disease management.
Health Promotion Services and Interventions
Health promotion allows people to be in more control of their health. Patients with congestive heart failure need to feel in control of their health even when battling chronic illnesses. One of the most fundamental aspects of health promotion is health literacy. According to Rice et al. (2018), health literacy has been linked to self-care behaviors among patients. Patients with adequate information can make healthier choices. One of the interventions that have been considered effective in addressing health promotion among elderly patients with congestive heart failure is nurse-led patient education. According to Rice et al. (2018), nurse-led patient education interventions have proven effective among patients with CHF because they reduce costs and hospital readmissions. In addition, nurse-led education interventions increase patient knowledge about CHF and provide patients with self-management techniques. In the absence of such knowledge, patients fail to adhere to their medication or adopt self-care behaviors (Rice et al., 2018). Nurse-led patient education interventions can be delivered either during home visits or over the telephone. As Jiang et al. (2021) reveal, a home-based nurse-led education intervention for older patients with heart failure increased their self-care over time. It also improved their self-efficacy in terms of improved symptoms control and functioning. Jiang et al. (2021) indicate that nurse-led education also reduced the number of unplanned hospital visits due to a cardiac event. Their results also support those of Rice et al. (2018) because they revealed that the intervention reduced the rate of hospital admissions.
Risk Management
Addressing risk factors for CHF can go a long way in preventing or slowing the progression of CHF in elderly people. According to Horwich and Fonarow (2017), lifestyle and medical factors contribute to the development of CHF, and the management of these risk factors is essential as part of population health management. Specifically, lifestyle factors include physical inactivity, overweight/obesity, poor diet, and smoking. Medical factors include high cholesterol levels, untreated high blood pressure, and uncontrolled diabetes. LaMonte (2018) indicates that prolonged exposure to diabetes, hypertension, and coronary atherosclerosis increases CHF risk. There are many cost-effective interventions that hea...