Effects of nurse management on the quality of heart failure care in minority communities: a randomized trial.

Background: Despite therapies proven effective for heart failure with systolic dysfunction, the condition continues to cause substantial hospitalization, disability, and death, especially among African- American and other nonwhite populations.

Objective: To compare the effects of a nurse-led intervention focused on specific management problems versus usual care among ethnically diverse patients with systolic dysfunction in ambulatory care practices.

Design: Randomized effectiveness trial conducted from September 2000 to September 2002.

Setting: The 4 hospitals in Harlem, New York.

Patients: 406 adults (45.8% were non-Hispanic black adults, 32.5% were Hispanic adults, 46.3% were women, and 36.7% were > or =65 years of age) who met eligibility criteria: systolic dysfunction, English- or Spanish-language speakers, community-dwelling patients, and ambulatory care practice patients.

Intervention: During a 12-month intervention, bilingual nurses counseled patients on diet, medication adherence, and self-management of symptoms through an initial visit and regularly scheduled follow-up telephone calls and facilitated evidence-based changes to medications in discussions with patients' clinicians.

Measurements: Hospitalizations (in 406 of 406 patients during follow-up) and self-reported functioning (in 286 of 406 patients during follow-up) at 12 months.

Results: At 12 months, nurse management patients had had fewer hospitalizations (143 hospitalizations vs. 180 hospitalizations; adjusted difference, -0.13 hospitalization/person-year [95% CI, -0.25 to -0.001 hospitalization/person-year]) than usual care patients. They also had better functioning: The Short Form-12 physical component score was 39.9 versus 36.3, respectively (difference, 3.6 [CI, 1.2 to 6.1]), and the Minnesota Living with Heart Failure Questionnaire score was 38.6 versus 47.3, respectively (difference, -8.8 [CI, -15.3 to -2.2]). Through 12 months, 22 deaths occurred in each group and percentages of patients who were hospitalized at least once were similar in each group (30.5% of nurse management patients vs. 36.5% of control patients; adjusted difference, -7.1 percentage points [CI, -16.9 to 2.6 percentage points]).

Limitations: Three nurses at 4 hospitals delivered interventions in this modest-sized trial, and 75% of the participants were from 1 site. It is not clear which aspects of the complex intervention accounted for the results.

Conclusions: Nurse management can improve functioning and modestly lower hospitalizations in ethnically diverse ambulatory care patients who have heart failure with systolic dysfunction. Sustaining improved functioning may require continuing nurse contact.