Population-based evaluation of the impact of socioeconomic status on clinical outcomes in patients with heart failure in integrated care settings.

Introduction And Objectives: Low socioeconomic status (SES) is associated with poor outcomes in patients with heart failure (HF). We aimed to examine the influence of SES on health outcomes after a quality of care improvement intervention for the management of HF integrating hospital and primary care resources in a health care area of 209 255 inhabitants.

Methods: We conducted a population-based pragmatic evaluation of the implementation of an integrated HF program by conducting a natural experiment using health care data.