Effect of a transitional care model following hospitalization for heart failure: 3‐year outcomes of the Patient‐Centered Care Transitions in Heart Failure (PACT‐HF) randomized controlled trial

Abstract Aims Patients are at high risk of death or readmission following hospitalization for heart failure (HF). We tested the effect of a transitional care model that included month‐long nurse‐led home visits and long‐term heart function clinic visits ‐ with services titrated to estimated risk of clinical events ‐ on 3‐year outcomes following hospitalization. Methods and results In a pragmatic, stepped‐wedge cluster randomized trial, 10 hospitals were randomized to the intervention versus usual care. The primary outcome was a composite of all‐cause death, readmission, or emergency department (ED) visit. Secondary outcomes included components of the primary composite outcomes, HF readmissions and healthcare resource utilization. There were 2494 patients (50.4% female) with mean age of 77.7 years. The primary outcome was reached in 1040 (94.2%) patients in the intervention and 1314 (94.5%) in the usual care group at 3 years. The intervention did not reduce the risk of the primary composite outcome (hazard ratio [HR] 0.92, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.81–1.05) nor the component outcomes overall, although numerically reduced the risk of ED visits in women but not men (HR 0.79, 95% CI 0.63–1.00 vs. HR 0.98, 95% CI 0.80–1.19; sex‐treatment interaction p = 0.23). The uptake of guideline‐directed medical therapy was no different with the intervention than with usual care, with the exception of sacubitril/valsartan, which increased with the intervention (3.3% vs 1.5%; relative risk 6.2, 95% CI 1.92–20.06). Conclusions More than 9 of 10 patients hospitalized for HF experienced all‐cause death, readmission, or ED visit at 3 years. A transitional care model with services titrated to risk did not improve the composite of these endpoints, likely because there were no major differences in uptake of medical therapies between the groups. Clinical Trial Registration: ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier NCT02112227.