Heart failure hospital stays fall, saving billions of dollars

Hospital stays for heart failure among Medicare patients fell 30% over a decade, the first such decline in the U.S. and forceful evidence that the nation is making headway in reducing the billion-dollar burden of a common condition. But the study of 55 million patients, the largest ever on heart failure trends, found only a slight decline in deaths within a year of leaving the hospital, and progress lagged for black men. From 1998 to 2008, the overall rate fell from 2,845 hospitalizations per 100,000 Medicare beneficiaries to 2,007 per 100,000, according to research published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association. If the rate had remained the same, there would have been 229,000 more heart failure hospital stays in 2008 at an additional cost to Medicare of $4.1 billion, according to the report’s lead author, Dr. Jersey Chen of Yale University School of Medicine. Last week, federal health officials reported the prevalence of self-reported heart disease in the U.S. decreased from nearly 7% to 6% from 2006 to 2010. Possible explanations for the decline in hospital stays abound, including healthier hearts, better control of risk factors like high blood pressure, and an increase in patients treated in emergency rooms and clinics without being admitted to hospitals. Read a longer story from The Associated Press about the new report here, or see the full report at the AMJA website here.