Congestive heart failure (CHF) is a common and growing health problem that affects 5 million Americans, with over 550,000 newly diagnosed cases, 287,000 deaths, and $30 billion in direct and indirect costs yearly. Despite a number of care management programs that are being adopted by private and public payers, CHF patients continue to experience poor outcomes. A potential contributor to these poor outcomes is the presence of depression, present in approximately 20-50% of CHF patients. Similar principles of effective chronic disease management apply to both depression and to CHF. Thus, we suggest that screening CHF patients for depression and then utilizing a single nurse care manager working under a physician's supervision to simultaneously deliver evidence-based treatments for both conditions when present is a novel and potentially more sustainable strategy for improving clinical outcomes than referring depressed CHF patients to separate care providers. Our revised three-year R34 treatment development proposal is responsive to NIMH PAR-06-248, From Intervention Development to Services, as its specific aims are to obtain the necessary feasibility and clinical data required to plan a large-scale R01 trial which will compare the effectiveness of a """"""""blended"""""""" depression/CHF care management program with current CHF care management programs in reducing depressive symptoms, improving HRQoL, and various other outcomes of interest. It consists of four coordinated phases: (1) Training;(2) Manual Development;(3) Cohort Study;and (4) Pilot Intervention. We will send nurse-recruiter/care managers from our present NIH-funded trial to treat post-CABG depression for training in two local in-patient and out-patient CHF care management programs. We subsequently will integrate the stepped collaborative care protocols for treating depression we developed in our earlier work with guideline-based protocols for treating CHF. Next, we will conduct a cohort study to estimate recruitment and """"""""usual care"""""""" treatment patterns for 372 depressed and 100 non-depressed CHF patients. ROC analyses will be applied so as to estimate suitably sensitive and specific PHQ-9 cut-off scores for identifying depressed patients who are likely to die or become rehospitalized at 6-month follow-up. Finally, we will pilot our telephone-based """"""""blended"""""""" collaborative care strategy to 30 depressed CHF patients to further refine our treatment strategy.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)
Type
Planning Grant (R34)
Project #
5R34MH078030-03
Application #
7615731
Study Section
Interventions Committee for Disorders Related to Schizophrenia, Late Life, or Personality (ITSP)
Program Officer
Niederehe, George T
Project Start
2007-05-10
Project End
2011-04-30
Budget Start
2009-05-01
Budget End
2011-04-30
Support Year
3
Fiscal Year
2009
Total Cost
$156,404
Indirect Cost
Name
University of Pittsburgh
Department
Internal Medicine/Medicine
Type
Schools of Medicine
DUNS #
004514360
City
Pittsburgh
State
PA
Country
United States
Zip Code
15213