Previously undiagnosed obstructive sleep apnea in patients hospitalized with congestive heart failure was associated with increased costs and readmissions, Healio reported.
“It is known that readmission rates are high for patients with congestive heart failure and readmission reduction efforts have only led to modest reductions. Moreover, these interventions can be costly to a health care system,” Nihal Patel, MD, fellow in the department of pulmonary, critical care and sleep medicine at The Ohio State University, Columbus, said during a presentation at the virtual CHEST Annual Meeting.
“To improve the cost-effectiveness of intervention, heart failure readmission reduction programs should target high prevalence and high-cost populations. One such population may be those with OSA, which is known to have a high prevalence in heart failure patients and is independently associated with readmissions.”
