Abstract 11189: Single Phone Call Follow-up Was an Effective Strategy to Improve Heart Failure Patients’ Outcomes

Introduction: Shorten hospital stays for health insurance reasons limits time for patient education. Although empirical studies demonstrated more intensive outpatient follow up can ameliorate psychological distress, improve self-care, and health related quality of life (HRQOL) in patients with heart failure (HF), it would be beneficial to identify effective but less expensive methods to provide post-discharge education follow up. Hypothesis: Single post-discharge individualized follow-up phone call (IP) will be as effective as a multiple visit outpatient clinic follow-up (OP) when compared with usual care (UC) on improving psychological distress, self-care, and HRQOL in HF patients. Methods: Randomized, 3-group design was used. Participants hospitalized for HF exacerbation at medical centers in Taiwan were randomly assigned to one of the 3 groups: IP (n=20), OP (n=22), or UC (n=30). IP included 3 education sessions: 2 in the hospital focused on individualized face-to-face teaching and one nurse follow-up ...