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About the project
Managing cardiovascular disease is a challenge for Victorians, with many experiencing multiple hospital admissions. Cardiovascular disease is a significant burden on the lives of Victorians, with many experiencing multiple hospital admissions and challenges in accessing specialist cardiac care in hospital and community care settings.
In this Commonwealth-funded project, we partnered with 20 Victorian health services to embed evidence-based models of care to support people to manage their cardiovascular disease at home and spend less time in hospital.
To achieve this, we supported hospitals to recruit a dedicated cardiac nurse to pilot models of care that support patients with high quality care in hospital and in the early discharge period. This statewide project began in January 2022 and completed in April 2024.
Outcomes
Overall, the project helped to reduce the percentage of patients with specific cardiac conditions from returning to hospital within 30 and 90 days after being discharged home. However, not all health services saw this improvement.
Improvements were seen across all sites in quality-of-care processes such as timely follow up, discharge planning, inpatient care coordination and self-management education.
Learn more about the outcomes of the Cardiovascular Nurse Ambassadors Project.
Resources
This example template is for health services who want to embed locally relevant and evidence-based models of care to improve the management of, and increase the time spent in the community for, those living with cardiovascular disease.
This document provides a starting point for sites looking to improve the quality of cardiovascular care within their local settings.
Supporting Partners
- Alfred Hospital
- Austin Hospital
- Bairnsdale Regional Health
- Barwon Health
- Bass Coast Health
- Bendigo Health
- Eastern Health
- Echuca Regional Health
- Goulburn Valley Health
- Grampians Health - Ballarat
- Mildura Base Hospital
- Monash Health Clayton
- Melbourne Health
- Mercy Health
- Peninsula Health
- Northern Health
- North East Health Wangaratta
- St Vincent’s Health
- Western Health Footscray
- Western Health Sunshine