Transitional Care Interventions for Heart Failure: What Are the Mechanisms?

Two decades ago, heart failure clinics were proposed widely as an effective means of improving care.1 Despite dozens of trials over subsequent years, it has often been difficult to ascertain the true effectiveness of such programs due to poor descriptions of study populations, interventions, comparators, and outcomes. This is compounded by the use of terms such as “transitional care,” “integrated care,” “coordinated care,” “community care,” and “person-centred care.” These differences in terminology continue to make drawing conclusions about the effectiveness of interventions difficult.