Clinical utility of surveillance and clinically prompted right heart catheterization in patients listed for heart transplantation.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: The 2016 ISHLT guidelines recommend that patients listed for orthotopic heart transplantation (OHT) undergo periodic surveillance right heart catheterization (RHC) to re-assess hemodynamics (Class I, level of evidence C). However, the impact of RHC on management remains unclear. The aim of this study was to determine the utility of both surveillance and clinically prompted RHCs in patients listed for OHT. METHODS: A retrospective study was conducted in adult patients listed for OHT at our hospital from 2006 through 2014. Each patient included had at least one RHC after being listed for OHT. The primary outcome was management change: hospitalization, surgery (OHT or mechanical circulatory support [MCS]), change in United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) status, or initiation/modification of vasoactive drugs, diuretics or neurohormonal blockade. RESULTS: Of the 194 patients included, 85 (43%) patients had more than one RHC. The median time between listing and transplantation was 115 days. Of the 376 RHCs performed, 187 (50%) were prompted by a clinical change; 189 (50%) were performed for surveillance. In 90.4% of clinically prompted RHCs and 42.9% of surveillance RHCs, a clinically important management change was implemented. Initiation/modification of vasoactive drugs, placement of MCS and/or change in UNOS transplant status occurred in 61 (33%) of the clinically prompted RHCs and 26 (14%) of the surveillance RHCs. Patients who underwent management change were more likely to receive a heart transplant (HR 1.58; CI 1.15-2.18) without an increased rate of death over the study period compared to those who did not have a management change. Multivariable analysis revealed that a hemoglobin level <12.2 g/dL (OR 2.96; CI 1.36-6.42) and a total bilirubin level >0.9 mg/dL (OR 5.07; CI 2.09-12.3) were predictors of management change. CONCLUSIONS: In patients awaiting OHT, RHCs prompted by clinical instability or routine surveillance resulted in frequent management changes, including earlier heart transplant and MCS implant. Our study supports the Class I recommendation to perform surveillance RHC in patients listed for OHT and suggests that centers should consider maintaining a low threshold for repeat RHC during the formal waiting time.

Does Contracting with Managed Care Organizations Remain A Barrier for Nurse Practitioners?

Upon implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), many managed care organizations (MCOs) initially increased their nurse practitioner (NP) contracting. This trend has not continued, potentially frustrating ACA efforts to expand primary care provider capacity. In this study, about 25% of the responding MCOs did not contract with NPs as primary care providers. only 62.5% of respondent MCOs offering Medicaid products reported contracting with NPs as primary care providers, suggesting this will place a disproportionate burden on low-income patients seeking to access care. Findings from this study also have important geographic implications, suggesting the decision to contract with NPs is made individually, not necessarily influenced by the numbers of newly insured or available primary care physicians.

Automated quality measurement in Department of the Veterans Affairs discharge instructions for patients with congestive heart failure.

Quality measurement is an important issue for the United States Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). In this study, we piloted the use of an informatics tool, the Multithreaded Clinical Vocabulary Server (MCVS), which extracted automatically whether the VA Office of Quality and Performance measures of quality of care were met for the completion of discharge instructions for inpatients with congestive heart failure. We used a single document, the discharge instructions, from one section of the medical records for 152 patients and developed a reference standard using two independent reviewers to assess performance. When evaluated against the reference standard, MCVS achieved a sensitivity of 0.87, a specificity of 0.86, and a positive predictive value of 0.90. The automated process using the discharge instruction document worked effectively. The use of the MCVS tool for concept-based indexing resulted in mostly accurate data capture regarding quality measurement, but improvements are needed to further increase the accuracy of data extraction.