March 21, 2023
The clinic’s credited with improving its health standard mortality ratio (HSMR) from one of the worst in the country to better than the national average. In 2017, CBRH’s cardiology department began exploring issues behind a health standard mortality ratio. The team found most patients who died of heart failure never saw a cardiologist during their hospital stay and many with known heart failure weren’t on optimal medical treatments or didn’t receive simple testing to measure cardiac function. The team agreed to:
- Reserve daily spots in the echocardiography lab for urgent patients from Nova Scotia Health’s peripheral sites to improve urgent access to echocardiography and clinical review by a cardiologist;
- Conduct education sessions for the family doctors and nursing staff at peripheral sites; and
- Engage with Novartis, which makes a popular heart medication, to fund the establishment of a heart titration clinic to allow the team to see patients and start treatment more quickly.
Originally separate from NSH during the pilot, the clinic’s now incorporated into the heart function clinic at the CBRH.