Epidemiologic Characterization of Heart Failure with Reduced or Preserved Ejection Fraction Populations Identified Using Medicare Claims

Background Administrative claims do not contain ejection fraction information for heart failure patients. We recently developed and validated a claims-based model to predict ejection fraction subtype. Methods Heart failure patients aged 65 years or above from US Medicare fee-for-service claims were identified using diagnoses recorded after a 6-month baseline period of continuous enrollment, which was used to identify predictors and to apply the claims-based model to distinguish heart failure with reduced or preserved ejection fraction (HFrEF or HFpEF). Patients were followed for the composite outcome of time to first worsening heart failure event (heart failure hospitalization or outpatient intravenous diuretic treatment) or all-cause mortality. Results A total of 3,134,414 heart failure patients with an average age of 79 years were identified, of which 200,950 (6.4%) were classified as HFrEF. Among those classified as HFrEF, men comprised a larger proportion (68% vs 41%) and the average age was lower (76 vs 79 years) compared with HFpEF. History of myocardial infarction was more common in HFrEF (32% vs 13%), while hypertension was more common in HFpEF (71% vs 77%). One-year cumulative incidence of the composite endpoint was 42.6% for HFrEF and 36.9% for HFpEF. One-year all-cause mortality incidence was similar between the groups (27.4% for HFrEF and 26.4% for HFpEF), however, cardiovascular mortality was higher for HFrEF (15.6% vs 11.3%), whereas noncardiovascular mortality was higher for HFpEF (11.8% vs 15.1%). Conclusion We replicated well-documented differences in key patient characteristics and cause-specific outcomes between HFrEF and HFpEF in populations identified based on the application of a claims-based model.