SWAN Hill District Health (SHDH) has been selected as the first site for the rollout of the I-HEART Project, a heart failure care project that has the potential to keep patients out of hospital and save lives.
In partnership with Deakin University, Austin Health and St Vincent’s Health, SHDH will receive more than $350,000 of the $5 million National Health and Medical Research Council multi-site project over the next two years.
SHDH’s Associate Professor Rex Prahbu says the point of the project is to trial new heart failure guidelines in regional Australia to help prevent heart failure patients going back to hospital.
“Basically what the trial will do is identify patients who had first heart failure presentation here in Swan Hill, and then there will be an intervention once they go home,” Prof Prahbu told The Guardian.
“We know that we are isolated with our broad area of patients, many of them above 70 years old who live alone, they are isolated,” he said.
“Often their after-hospital care is really dependent on them, it really depends on what supports they have to follow up that way.”
The project will allow heart failure patients to have access to a cardiac specialist once they leave the hospital via tele-health and also face to face. Patients will also have access to a nurse practitioner who will assist them with things like checking their medication and ensuring they are getting proper rest.
Prof Prahbu says that the Mallee area is an “epidemic of chronic disease and heart failure”, and believes that, combined with a low doctor-patient ratio of 1 to 600, makes Swan Hill the ideal location for the trial.
“Even today we see if you open Swan Hill Primary Health or Swan Hill Medical group to get a GP appointment, you will have to wait for two weeks,” he said.
So beyond the initial benefits to heart failure patients, the project will have a run-on effect to the pressure on the local health system as well.
“I think any care that’s delivered, and if it is quality care, it has a reaction as an equal and opposite reaction,” Prof Prahbu said.
“So any intervention that you do will have overwhelming effects on the system.”
SHDH heart failure research nurse Caelah Siebert will be managing the clinical aspects of the trial.
“I think the beauty of this is, that nurse was working for us, she now gains expert knowledge in this area, and she then delivers that knowledge to her colleagues,” Prof Prahbu said.
“After the trial is over we will look at the health services absorbing the knowledge that we have learnt and hopefully be able to sustain that after it is implemented.”
Prof Prahbu is feeling positive about the project and believes it is a massive win for the entire community.
“Whatever comes, we will be learning from that and we will be embedding that in our practice after the two years of the trial.”
