The Examination of Home-Based Cardiac Rehabilitation Program Implementation in Middle Tennessee

Abstract

Cardiac rehabilitation is essential in providing supervised programs in which patients can utilize exercise, behavior modification, and patient education to improve quality of life and reduce morbidity and mortality rates following a cardiac event. Two forms of delivery that are being utilized by facilities, facility-based cardiac rehabilitation (FBCR) and home-based cardiac rehabilitation (HBCR). The purpose of this study was to examine how FBCR and HBCR programs are implemented in Middle Tennessee. A total of 5 facilities completed an interview with 10 closed-response and 35 open-response questions. The top barriers to FBCR reported were location of the facility, transportation, insurance, time, motivation, and fear of COVID. The top barriers to HBCR included lack of safety, accountability, motivation, equipment, and resources, as well as learning the technology. Interestingly, the only program with a recently implemented HBCR program only reported technology as a barrier to program implementation, indicating discord between anticipated and actual barriers to HBCR implementation.