Problem:
The purpose of this project is to discuss the effectiveness of a thorough, comprehensive discharge plan and medication education for patients with heart failure. The goal is to prevent heart failure patients from being readmitted with the same heart failure symptoms within thirty days of discharge. This helps reduce exacerbation episodes and manage the disease in an outpatient setting rather than in an acute care hospital. This will also increase the organization's profit by preventing concerns about reimbursement and billing that can arise from the same diagnoses and hospital readmissions. There are about "5.7 million adults in the United States who have Congestive Heart Failure" (Hoang-Kim et al., 2020, p. 223). It is estimated that the thirty-day readmission rate after a CHF hospitalization is about twenty-four percent, and "sixty-one percent of those readmissions occur within fifteen days of discharge" (Hoang-Kim et al., 2020, p. 223). The most alarming statistic result is that CHF diagnoses account for about fifty-five percent of all hospital readmissions (Hoang-Kim et al., 2020). This is when Congress passed the Affordable Care Act's Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program, or HRRP, which allows the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to penalize hospitals and institutions with a high 30-day readmission rate (Ziaeian & Fonarow, 2016). This not only affects the hospital's revenue but also lowers patient satisfaction and degrades the quality of care. Need Assignment Help?