Heart failure can be a complex condition touching many other aspects of a person’s well-being. Living with heart failure means that a person’s heart muscle doesn’t pump as much blood as their body needs. Failure doesn’t mean the heart has stopped; it means the heart is not pumping as well as it should. At Kaiser Permanente, we have award-winning programs for our heart failure treatments.
Our main goal is to get our members and their care team all together at once to discuss the best way to get them on track in all aspects of their treatment, not limited to just the exam room. A Kaiser Permanente care team may include a cardiologist, dietician, pharmacist, and social worker in one appointment.
Here’s what our members can expect:
A Kaiser Permanente Cardiologist will be there to oversee all aspects of treatment.
A Kaiser Permanente Dietitian will provide advice in balancing competing dietary needs – such as diabetic, low-sodium, coumadin-specific, and kidney-specific diets.
A Kaiser Permanente Pharmacist will be there to provide information on their medications. They will make sure their medical record is up to date on any medications a member is no longer taking. They can answer any questions about current prescribed medications and over-the-counter medications. This pharmacist is trained to alert a member of any medications that may adversely interact with each other and their diet.
A Kaiser Permanente Social Worker will be there to help find affordable programs for medication and treatment copays. They can also connect a member to community resources for transportation and mental health.
In 2020, we started our Home-Based Cardiac Rehab program, which is a program that monitors your heart from the comfort of your own home. Since we started the program at Kaiser Permanente, 736 members have graduated from the program; these members were less likely to be re-admitted to the hospital.1
1 Hospital readmission rate was less than 2%, compared to 4% to 5% of those referred externally or those that did not enroll for the HBCR program.
