Device-Enabled Disease Management for Heart Failure

As if the words "disease management" weren't already a business killer, the results of a study on disease management for congestive heart failure presented at the American Heart Association meeting in November tapped another nail into the concept. Disease management usually refers to a kind of service-based oversight designed to improve both the clinical outcomes and the economics of treating patients. Congestive heart failure (CHF) has long been the target of such initiatives. It is the number one cause for hospitalizations in the US, and the health care system spends $40 billion on the disease annually. Disease management in heart failure thus seeks to manage medical therapies and symptoms efficiently to avoid frequent or long hospitalizations.

The South Texas CHF Disease Management Project, results of which were presented at AHA and published in Circulation, studied 1,069...