Heart failure affects about 5.8 million people in the United States, with 670,000 new patients diagnosed annually. Each year over 1 million people are admitted to an inpatient setting for heart failure. It is the leading cause of hospitalization among people over the age of 65, and accounts for approximately 20% of the hospital admissions in this group. It has an annual cost of greater than 39 billion dollars a year.
Although often used interchangeably by the public, heart failure is not the same as a heart attack or cardiac arrest. Simply put, heart failure occurs when the heart is unable to pump well enough to supply the body with freshly oxygenated blood. Heart failure can be caused by coronary artery disease, heart attack, high blood pressure and cardiomyopathy.
The Heart Failure Center at NuHealth provides heart failure patients and their families with comprehensive education, symptom management, and monitoring to improve their cardiovascular health and improve their quality of life. Our goal is to empower patients to better care for themselves by improving patient understanding and family support.
We accept referrals for patients at any stage of the disease and provide a full range of cardiovascular services including referral to transplant centers when appropriate. We take a multidisciplinary approach to heart failure; this approach often results in exceptional outcomes even for the most severe forms of heart failure.
NuHealth was recently awarded the AHA’s Get With the Guidelines Silver Performance Achievement Award. This recognition signifies that NuHealth has reached an impressive benchmark in implementing the evidenced- based guidelines and procedures of the AHA GWTG quality-improvement initiative which gives hospitals the tools for caring for patients with heart failure that have been shown to improve patient outcomes, prevent future hospitalizations and prolong lives.
To learn more about NuHealth’s Heart Failure Center, or to arrange an appointment with a cardiac specialist, please call (516) 296-4949.
Clinical Staff
Director – Deborah Ahern, ANP-BC