The Interim HealthCare Living with Heart Failure Program

Heart failure is a chronic disease. Except for a transplant, care for patients with this condition lengthens their lives and improves the quality of their lives as they live with this disease. That's exactly the goal of the Interim HealthCare Living with Heart Failure Program. We provide care for the symptoms of the condition and we provide learning and life-skills that allow patients to live more comfortably with heart failure.

The program moves clients along the following continuum of preparation for self care:

• Level I
  Beginning Self Care. At this level clients gain a foundation of understanding of their disease, the role of their medications and the basics of self-monitoring.
• Level II
  On the Way to Self Care. Clients learn more about their disease, especially how to prevent complications; how to practice better health habits in nutrition and exercise and the side effects of their medications.
• Level III
  Independent in Self Care. Clients learn healthful behaviors that reduce the effects of heart failure, develop exercise habits that improve strength and endurance and how to best communicate with their physicians.

Nursing and therapy services, and education, are provided by clinicians who have completed an extensive professional education program about Heart Failure.

The Interim HealthCare Heart Failure Program makes the best use of the acute care benefits available through Medicare, Medicaid and most insurance and managed care programs to equip clients and families to live with Heart Failure on a long term basis. It's more than just treating the symptoms and waiting for complications to move the client back into the acute care health care system. Our program is about keeping clients safely at home where they want to be.