Welcome to the Healing Hearts: Heart Failure Care Program at MaineHealth
If you or someone in your family has heart failure, or you're a clinician working with patients with heart failure, this website is for you. It's provided to help improve care and outcomes for people with heart failure and offers information on how to manage heart failure and find support.
The goal of the program is to improve quality of life for Maine people with heart failure. The program emphasizes the importance of education, self-care and the coordination of heart failure care among people with heart failure and their families, and the physicians, nurses and other professionals who provide medical care.
Successful heart failure management includes a close working relationship between the patient and the healthcare provider team, as well as the patient taking action every day to manage his or her heart health, including through diet and exercise. The goals of the Healing Hearts: Heart Failure Care Program include fewer hospitalizations and emergency room visits, and a better quality of life.
If you have heart failure, be sure to:
- Weigh yourself every day and take action following the Heart Failure Zone Chart.
- Get a flu shot every fall. Flu symptoms can make your heart failure symptoms worse.
- Talk with your healthcare provider about participating in The Beat Goes On so you will know how to live a healthy and active life with heart failure.
- If you smoke cigarettes, think seriously about quitting. Even secondhand smoke will make your heart failure symptoms worse and harm those around you. If you're not ready to quit, smoke only outside your home or car. Find out how to get help quitting from the Maine Tobacco HelpLine, 800-207-1230.
|
