20/01/2026
Heart failure remains a leading cause of potentially avoidable hospital admissions throughout the United States and a significant driver of unnecessary, avoidable costs within value-based care programs.
In a baseline population of 3233 hospital emergency department (ED) visits for heart failure, which occurred over 12 months ending in June 2023 across six WellSpan Health acute care hospitals, 2868 (88.7%) resulted in inpatient admissions. Among those admissions, 2535 (96.0%) were deemed potentially avoidable by the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Prevention Quality Indicator (PQI) 08 heart failure admission quality indicator. Collectively, these admissions totaled US$27,618,825 in potentially avoidable total costs of care.
Through process improvements that modified triaging algorithms related to heart failure exacerbations where shortness of breath or lower extremity edema were present, 92.2% of triaged patients with heart failure were managed in an ambulatory setting, with 84.7% avoiding an ED visit within 24 hours.
The 12% cost reduction goal was almost achieved just 1 year into the intervention, with an 11.2% reduction in potentially avoidable admissions (CMS PQI 08, a core quality measure) and a US$3,352,248 reduction in total costs of care.
This novel intervention executed with Lean management principles was a pragmatic process improvement that can be readily replicated by other systems to reduce unnecessary, avoidable referrals of mild to moderate heart failure exacerbations to hospital EDs.
