Home-based Cardiac Rehabilitation for People Living With Heart Failure and Their Caregivers- The DK:REACH-HF Pilot Study

Background: Participation in cardiac rehabilitation (CR) is a strong recommendation of clinical guidelines for the management of heart failure (HF) because it is demonstrated to be a clinically effective and cost-effective intervention. Despite this, Danish data shows the uptake of CR is suboptimal (51%). A major barrier is that the traditional mode of CR provision is centre based. Travelling (time and cost), dislike of group exercise, and inconvenient timings are some key problems to participation. A potential solution is use of home-based programmes as an alternative to traditional CR. A novel home-based programme for patients with HF and their caregivers (REACH-HF), developed in the United Kingdom has achieved improvements in quality of life and proven to be cost effective. The REACH-HF program is translated and adapted into a Danish context (DK: REACH-HF) and is now ready to be tested in a Danish setting. The aim of this project is to improve the access and uptake of CR among HF patients in Denmark, particularly in subgroups of patients who currently do not benefit from center-based CR.