Home Palliative Care for Advanced Heart Failure Using Information and Communication Technology for Advance Care Planning

With Japan’s rapidly aging population, the incidence of heart failure (HF) is increasing dramatically, and there is a need for home palliative care to prevent rehospitalization for patients with advanced HF. Advance care planning (ACP) is considered an integral process of palliative care, and information and communication technology systems have recently been used to share end-of-life issues among the palliative care team. We present the case of a patient with advanced HF who avoided rehospitalization after the provision of home-based intervention and palliative care using information and communication technology to share the ACP process among the palliative care team. Four months after the patient’s death, a questionnaire that identified only the patient and not individual family members showed that the patient’s family was satisfied with the at-home end-of-life care.