Connecting the circle from home to heart-failure disease management.

Rates of death and readmission after hospitalization for heart failure remain high despite considerable advances in evidence-based medical treatment.1–3 In 2009, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services began public reporting of rates of readmission for any reason among patients who had been hospitalized for heart failure, and earlier this year, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act4 was signed into law, establishing financial incentives for hospitals to reduce readmissions for cardiovascular disease. In this era, there is a growing fiscal, as well as medical, imperative for new strategies to smooth the transition from hospital to home for patients . . .