While hospitalization rates rose from 1996 to 2009 for congestive heart failure patients, the length of stay and mortality rates declined, according to a new study published in Clinical Cardiology.
For the study, researchers examined data from approximately 15.5 million hospitalizations for heart failure compiled annually through the National Hospital Discharge Survey conducted by the National Center for Health Statistics.
In 1996, the number of patients hospitalized for heart failure was 1,000,766. By 2009, that number grew to 1,173,832. For the same time period, the average length of stay for a heart failure patient decreased from 6.07 days to 5.26 days. Inpatient mortality rates also declined from a rate of 4.92 percent to 3.41 percent.
"There has been significant progress in heart failure management over the past two decades, but more has to be done," said Muhammad Bilal Munir, MD, clinical instructor of medicine at the University of Pittsburgh's Division of General Internal Medicine and corresponding author of the study. "The number of hospitalizations has increased, identifying a need to implement heart failure quality measures stringently to reduce these admissions, therefore reducing heart failure-associated healthcare costs."
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