REACH-HF beacon sites
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Evaluating the process of implementation of a home-based, facilitated self-care support programme for people with heart failure – Rehabilitation Enablement in Chronic Heart Failure (REACH-HF) in four “beacon” sites.
IRAS ID
261723
Contact name
Colin Greaves
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Birmingham, Head of Research Governance and Ethics
Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier
N/A, N/A
Duration of Study in the UK
2 years, 7 months, 14 days
Research summary
It is common that new treatments and health care innovations do not reach their targeted patient group. Novel ways of delivering health care are important, as they help to reach patients that would otherwise struggle to receive the required treatment. This is the case in patients with heart failure, who often struggle to attend centre-based cardiac rehabilitation sessions. Such sessions are proven to help patients recover quicker from the physical impact of heart failure and cope better with associated emotional difficulties.
RAECH-HF (Rehabilitation Enablement in Chronic Heart Failure) is a novel home-based cardiac rehabilitation programme for people with heart failure. The programme showed good results when tested by the research team. The proposed study will track how the programme will be delivered alongside centre-based cardiac rehabilitation services and how it will perform in real-life clinical settings.
Four well-established cardiac rehabilitation services will become REACH-HF early adopter sites. Three health care professionals at each site will be trained to deliver REACH-HF programme to patients with heart failure in their homes between June 2019 and December 2020. Patients will have a choice of whether to access centre-based or home-based programme.
In order to evaluate the process of implementation of REACH-HF intervention researchers will conduct a number of interviews with the relevant NHS staff (people involved in the delivery, planning and commissioning of cardiac rehabilitation services) to find out how the programme fits in with current health care provision and what are the difficulties hindering its implementation. In addition, a small number of cardiac rehabilitation sessions will be audio recorded and the quality of delivery will be assessed. The study will also assess patients’ outcomes as a result of the treatment. That information will be gathered from anonymised data routinely collated in a national database for cardiac rehabilitation.
REC name
South Central - Hampshire B Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
19/SC/0304
Date of REC Opinion
3 Jul 2019
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion