Health Innovation Network: Heart failure pathway guides

Summary

Despite advances in treatment, many patients with heart failure still experience delays in diagnosis, variation in care and avoidable hospital admissions.

To support systems in addressing these challenges, the Health Innovation Network has developed a suite of practical guides designed to improve the heart failure pathway from early identification through to long-term management and end-of-life care.

Content

This resource set brings together two complementary guides:

1. Heart Failure Blueprint for Healthcare Professionals A comprehensive overview of the optimal heart failure pathway, structured across seven stages from case finding and diagnosis to ongoing management and palliative care. It includes data, best practice examples, and innovations from across health systems to support pathway redesign.
2. Improving the Heart Failure Pathway Through Quality Improvement: A How-To Guide A practical, step-by-step guide to help teams identify gaps, design solutions, and implement sustainable improvements using a structured quality improvement approach.

These guides are designed to:

• Support earlier diagnosis and intervention.
• Improve coordination across primary, community and secondary care.
• Enable adoption of evidence-based treatments and innovations.
• Reduce avoidable admissions and improve patient outcomes.
• Provide a practical ‘playbook’ for local transformation.

These resources are intended for multidisciplinary teams working across the pathway, including:

• Cardiologists, GPs and clinical leads.
• Nurses, pharmacists and allied health professionals.
• Service managers and commissioners.
• Quality improvement and transformation leads.

The guides can be used flexibly:

• As a complete programme to redesign your pathway end-to-end.
• To target specific challenges such as diagnosis or optimisation.
• As a facilitation tool for workshops and system-wide collaboration.
• Used together, they provide both the what (the blueprint) and the how (the improvement approach) to support meaningful and sustainable change.