April 2016:

Experts say heart failure services have room for improvement

The Alliance for Heart Failure has called for immediate action from NHS England to draw up and implement a viable timetable to deliver the recommendations of the ‘Living with Heart Failure’ report, published today by the All Party Parliamentary Group on Heart Disease (APPG), chaired by Stuart Andrew MP.

Professor Andrew Clark, co-chair of the Alliance and the Advisory Panel for the Living with Heart Failure Inquiry, along with other expert representatives from key organisations and related areas, said:

“The report’s recommendations are ambitious. But every single one is deliverable within a relatively short timeframe. The advice and evidence provided to the Inquiry by world-leading specialists and professionals give both context and momentum to these recommendations, and there is no credible reason why the NHS could not – or should not – begin implementing them today and start to save lives straight away.

“The Alliance for Heart Failure is calling on NHS England, Health Education England, Clinical Commissioning Groups, and NHS Improvement to work together and adopt all the report’s recommendations. NHS England should report on the results of this action a year from now.”

The AHF’s mission is to achieve better outcomes for patients by ensuring that those affected with heart failure are diagnosed in time and have access to the right care, services and support where they live. The AHF welcomes this timely report and its broad range of cost-effective and practical recommendations that can improve diagnosis, treatment and care for heart failure patients across the country, and deliver a consistent health service to people wherever they are in the UK.