Case Study: MU Health Care achieves more than 32% reduction in congestive heart failure readmissions with Cerner

MU Health Care surpasses readmissions goals for congestive heart failure

MU Health Care, a Cerner ITWorks™ client, set out to improve patient outcomes by lowering congestive heart failure (CHF) readmissions—initially targeting a 5% reduction. Faced with the challenge of identifying at-risk patients and coordinating multidisciplinary care, the health system assembled an interdisciplinary team to design an IT-enabled clinical improvement project.

The team built an EHR algorithm that identifies probable CHF patients and automatically triggers targeted tasks for nurses, pharmacists, dietitians, education staff and cardiac rehab—while minimizing physician alerts to avoid alert fatigue. The initiative drove a more than 32% drop in CHF readmissions (from 24% to 16%), earned MU Health Care a CEO innovation award, and contributed to recognition as a leading hospital IT department.

MU Health Care

S. Hasan Naqvi

Associate Chief Medical Officer