Improving Congestive Heart Failure Care with a Clinical Decision Unit.

Evidence supporting the development of Clinical Decision Units (CDUs) to impact congestive heart failure readmission rates comes from several categories of the literature. In this study, a pre-post design with comparison group was used to evaluate the impact of the CDU. Early changes in clinical and financial outcome indicators are encouraging. Nurse leaders seek ways to improve clinical outcomes while managing the current financially challenging environment. Implementation of a CDU provides many opportunities for nurse leaders to positively impact clinical care and financial performance within their institutions.