Protocol for Telehealth Evaluation and Follow-up of Patients with Chronic Heart Failure during the COVID-19 Pandemic

ABSTRACT Because of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, we were forced to cancel scheduled visits for nearly 150 patients followed in our heart failure (HF) outpatient clinic. Therefore, we structured a telephone follow-up, developing a standardized 23 item questionnaire from whom we obtained the Covid-19-HFscore. The questionnaire, was built to reproduce our usual clinical evaluation investigating patient’s social and functional condition, mood, adherence to pharmacological and non-pharmacological recommendations, clinical and hemodynamic status, pharmacological treatment and need to contact emergency services. The score was used as a clinical tool to define patients’ clinical stability and timing of the following telephone contact on the basis of the assignment to progressively increasing risk score groups: green (0-3), yellow (4-8) and red (≥9). Here we present our experience applying the score in the first thirty patients who completed the four weeks follow-up, describing baseline clinical characteristics and events that occurred in the period of observation.