Calif. researchers get $9.9M to study heart failure readmission

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) has awarded $9.9 million to a group of five University of California (UC) medical schools, plus Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, to research use of wireless and telephone care management to reduce hospital readmissions for heart failure patients.

The three-year grant is funded under the AHRQ's Clinical and Health Outcomes Initiative in Comparative Effectiveness (CHOICE) program.

This project compares two approaches designed to help patients make a smooth transition from inpatient to outpatient care: managing the transition from inpatient to outpatient care via telephone, and managing the transition from inpatient to outpatient care via wireless remote monitors and telephone. These will be compared to the standard care for heart failure patients, and will compare whether each approach reduces readmissions among heart failure patients at six medical centers, according to Michael Ong, MD, assistant professor of medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UC Los Angeles and the grant's principal investigator.

The research group also includes teams from UC Davis, UC Irvine, UC San Diego, UC San Francisco and Cedars-Sinai.

The award is part of $473 million in AHRQ grants and contracts that support projects to help people make healthcare decisions based on the best evidence of effectiveness. The funding covers all of the AHRQ’s allocation and $173 million administered for the HHS Secretary by the AHRQ.

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