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19-04-2023

“Heart Failure: An Inconvenient Truth” as a tool to drive discussions to improve quality of life in Germany

On the 29th of March, the Patient Organization Herzschwäche Deutschland organized their second yearly multi-stakeholder round-table. The meeting connected German payers (AOK, BARMER, DAK), industry (Boehringer-Ingelheim, AstraZeneca, Bayer Vital, Roche Diagnostics, CSL Vifor, Abbott, Novartis), associations (German Society for Cardiology, Heart Failure Policy Network, Deutsche Herzstiftung, Bundesarbeitsgemeinschaft Pflegeexperten Herzinsuffizienz e.V., Defibrillator Deutschland, Initiative Herzklappe), nurses, cardiologists, policy makers and government to debate topics that are mostly important to heart failure patient.

Discussions focused on improving heart failure care and quality of life

The topic of this year’s round table was improvements in care and quality of life. Natalia Eitel, manager at Vintura, joined the meeting to present key insights of our whitepaper “Heart Failure: An Inconvenient Truth”. After presenting the substantial impact of heart failure on the patients ecosystem, and highlighting main challenges that patients face and their preferences, she closed her presentation with a powerful call-to-action to specific stakeholders. Ms. Ulrike Nikola, journalist of the German radio Bayerischer Rundfunk moderated the debate between the different stakeholders after each of the presentations.

Great hybrid setting connecting virtual and physical participants

The meeting, very well organized by the heart failure patient Mr. Winfried Klausnitzer and Ms. Gabriele Meyer, both from Herzschwäche Deutschland, unified opinions shared virtually and physically in an effortless hybrid environment. Other topics of discussion covered the ideal heart failure care framework from the Heart Failure Policy Network, the psychological impact on patients’ environment, telemedicine advances & opportunities, the benefits of using validated quality of life questionnaires in practice, the importance of brain natriuretic peptide (BNP) and N-terminal proBNP (NT-proBNP), an useful biomarker both in the diagnosis and the prognosis of heart failure in rehabilitation programs.

Roundtable summary_germany_Vintura

Debate must continue and participants are commited to drive actions

After enthusiastic and interesting presentations and discussions, Mr. Winfried Klausnitzer summarized the key takeaways and concluded that this is a topic that requires continuous awareness and true partnership between all stakeholders. All participants agreed on the importance of continuing the debate and were committed to drive actions whenever appropriate and wherever possible.

More information

For more information about how to advocate for better quality of life and how to best equip, enable, empower and engage patients, please contact Natalia Eitel.

To have additional insights on the impact of heart failure on the patient’s quality of life, please download our whitepaper, that is based on a pan-European survey performed with over 600 patients:

INTERESTED IN READING MORE?

In our white paper “Heart Failure – An Inconvenient Truth”, developed together with Pumping Marvellous (UK), AVEC (FR), Herzschwäche Deutschland (DE) and The Patients Voice (NL), we advocate for better quality of life in heart failure. This whitepaper highlights the experiences of patients living with heart failure, clearly demonstrating the burden of heart failure and its impact on quality of life. You can download the white paper here: 

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My bicultural background (Brazilian-German) gave me the ability to easily understand different ways of thinking and to approach challenges on a different manner.