Understanding how hospital discharge programs help heart failure patients

After you leave the hospital for heart failure, you're at high risk of being readmitted or having serious problems. This study is testing how well two programs—one that provides home nursing visits and medical coordination, and another that uses remote monitoring devices to watch your heart—help you stay healthy at home. Researchers want to understand which patients benefit most from these programs and whether using both together works better than using just one.

Nearly half of heart failure patients are readmitted to the hospital within a year after discharge, and many die. Two nationwide programs have been rolled out to prevent this, but nobody has fully studied whether they really work, whether patients actually use them, or whether combining them is better than using one alone.