A multimodal quality improvement intervention involving pharmacy and primary care effectively increased SGLT-2 inhibitor prescribing in eligible patients with heart failure, from 7.1% to 9.0%.
SGLT-2 inhibitor prescribing among eligible heart failure patients increased after the intervention, from 7.1% to 9.0%.
The project identified underutilization of SGLT-2 inhibitors in eligible patients with heart failure across the health system and targeted barriers contributing to it.
The intervention combined pharmacist education to primary care providers with a cost information handout.
The authors concluded that physician associates, as a key part of the primary care workforce, play an important role in initiating guideline-directed medical therapy.
This quality improvement project looked at why a type of medication called SGLT-2 inhibitors was rarely prescribed to people with heart failure who could benefit from it across one health system. The team used a heart failure registry to track how often eligible patients were prescribed these drugs before and after the intervention. The interventions were pharmacist education for primary care providers and a handout with cost information. After these steps, prescribing in eligible patients rose from 7.1% to 9.0%, a relative increase of about 27%. Although prescribing remained low in absolute terms, the change suggests that combining pharmacy and primary care efforts can help move these guideline-recommended medications into use. The authors point to physician associates and other primary care clinicians as important players in starting guideline-directed heart failure therapy. This was a quality improvement project rather than a controlled trial, so this research suggests the approach is promising but does not prove it was the sole cause of the change.
Hoppe N, Haugh S, Umbreit A, Morlock M, Sathre J, Johnson J, et al.. (2026). Increasing use of SGLT-2 inhibitors among patients with heart failure.. JAAPA : official journal of the American Academy of Physician Assistants. https://doi.org/10.1097/01.JAA.0000000000000396