Hospice and palliative care provider VIA Health has long invested in disease-specific programs. Now, the North Carolina-based nonprofit is amplifying its support for congestive heart failure patients.
Case in point, the organization recently achieved a Heart Failure Certification from the American Heart Association, which is evaluated in accordance with evidence-based standards designed to ensure high quality care and adherence to clinical practice guidelines. The certification process takes into account six domains: program management, personnel education, patient and caregiver education, care coordination, clinical management and performance improvement.
VIA Health expects that certification will generate referrals from referral partners like cardiology practices, primary care providers and health systems, according to CMO Dr. Bridget Hiller.
“Millions of Americans are going to live with two or more chronic illnesses, and unless we have key disease-specific programs and nationally recognized societies take this as a key priority, we’re going to lose in terms of patients that have certain diseases at the end of life,” Hiller told Hospice News. “The numbers have continued to grow in terms of building these quality indicators to ensure that heart failure patients get adequate and high-value, quality end-of-life care in their trajectory and get enrolled in hospice and palliative care.”
Close to 6.7 million adults aged 20 or older suffer from congestive heart failure in the United States, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The disease in 2022 was mentioned on more than 457,000 U.S. death certifications. In 2012, heart failure cost the nation an estimated $30.7 billion.
However, hospice utilization among these patients remains low. In 2022, 52,375 Medicare decedents with (unspecified) heart failure as a principal diagnosis elected hospice — about 2.8% of all patients who received the benefit, the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization reported. An additional 36,860, or 2% of all 2022 Medicare hospice decedents, had hypertensive heart and renal disease with congestive heart failure as a principal diagnosis.
“Utilization by heart failure patients is growing, and there are many reasons for that, but the numbers still consistently are low,” Hiller said. “That was really one of the key priorities and reasons why the American Heart Association really took this lens and made this a key priority. So there are growing numbers, but we still have a lot more work to do.”
The heart failure program is nestled in with a range of other disease-specific programs at VIA Health, including those for respiratory illnesses and dementia. The company also has plans to launch more disease-specific initiatives going forward, according to VIA Health CEO Peter Brunnick.
VIA Health has a three-pronged approach to marketing the program and getting the word out to current and prospective referral sources. For one, the organization is listed on the American Heart Association’s website as a certified provider.
Also, VIA Health’s “robust and large” marketing team will provide health care providers with education about the heart failure program using specific sales guidelines that the organization developed, Hiller said. Finally, VIA Health will leverage social media campaigns to reach patients, families and other stakeholders.
“It’s really something that our business development team is out promoting. We want people to know that we have a designed program,” Brunnick told Hospice News. “A lot of folks say they have a cardiac program. On the surface, yes, but I don’t think they’re really programs of substance. That’s the difference here, and so we speak to our marketing people, speak to referral sources and cardiologists at various markets. They really have something legitimate that they can promote for the organization.”