Million Hearts Cardiac Rehab Collaborative: Getting 70% of Eligible Patients Into Rehab

What it is

The Million Hearts® Cardiac Rehabilitation Collaborative (CRC) is an open forum of professionals from many fields working toward one goal: getting at least 70% of eligible patients to take part in cardiac rehabilitation (CR) — and so prevent a second cardiovascular event.

• Who: it began as a small working group of experts and now has more than 700 members from more than 370 organizations and agencies — CR professionals, clinicians and care teams, hospital and health system leaders, CR participants and their families, payers, innovators and others.
• How: members follow a published road map of steps and best practices to raise CR referral, enrollment and adherence, organized in the CRC Action Plan, which is updated every year.
• When: the collaborative meets online every quarter to share information, ideas and resources.

2026 meetings

Register for the 2026 meetings. All times Eastern.

Questions: MillionHeartsCRC@cdc.gov.

Tools from the collaborative's members

For hospitals and health systems

• Million Hearts®/AACVPR Cardiac Rehabilitation Change Package (PDF): a quality-improvement guide for hospital and CR teams — process changes CR champions can make to raise referral, enrollment and participation, with links to proven interventions and tools.
• TAKEheart: the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality's initiative helping hospitals and health systems use evidence-based ways to improve CR referral, enrollment and retention.
• Cardiac Rehabilitation Communications Toolkit: key messages, patient materials, sample social media posts and graphics, and syndicated content on why CR is worth it.
• Promoting Patient Participation in Cardiac Rehabilitation: a free online course from the International Council of Cardiovascular Prevention and Rehabilitation in five languages, teaching inpatient heart-care staff to encourage CR at the bedside.

For payers

• Value-Based Insurance Design Opportunities for Cardiovascular Disease Prevention and Management (passcode iG2M7$^N): a Million Hearts® webinar from February 16, 2021 on the value of CR (and self-measured blood pressure monitoring) to third-party payers, and how value-based insurance design can raise CR use.
• Cardiac Rehabilitation: A New HEDIS Measure for Heart Health: the National Committee for Quality Assurance on the new CR measure in the Healthcare Effectiveness Data and Information Set.
• Cardiac Rehabilitation Executive Summary for Payers (PDF): from the American Association of Cardiovascular and Pulmonary Rehabilitation — what CR is, who qualifies, its value, why it's underused, and how payers can raise participation.

For researchers and innovators

• National Institutes of Health grants: Increasing Use of Cardiovascular and Pulmonary Rehabilitation in Traditional and Community Settings and Tailoring Cardiac Rehabilitation to Enhance Participation of Older Adults.
• Million Hearts® CR webinars, October 2020, on the value of CR, the need for new ways to deliver it, and the research testing them:
• • New Cardiac Rehabilitation Delivery Models (passcode i?bHDc5C)
  • Addressing New Cardiac Rehabilitation Delivery Evidence Gaps (passcode g06H1D%i)
  • Cardiac Rehabilitation 101: Needs and Opportunities to Address Disparities (passcode !fbf92w$)

Materials for clinicians, CR teams, patients and partners are on the Million Hearts® cardiac rehabilitation page.

Key publications

• Increasing Cardiac Rehabilitation Participation From 20% to 70%: A Road Map — Mayo Clinic Proceedings, 2016. The collaborative's own plan: the key steps and best practices to lift participation from 20% to 70%.
• The Million Hearts Initiative: Catalyzing Utilization of Cardiac Rehabilitation and Accelerating Implementation of New Care Models — Journal of Cardiopulmonary Rehabilitation and Prevention, 2020. Million Hearts® partners' work and progress on CR, now and next.
• A Review of the Design and Implementation of a Hybrid Cardiac Rehabilitation Program — same journal, 2021. What to weigh in designing hybrid CR, which combines in-person sessions with virtual and remote CR around the patient.

Sources

Based on "Cardiac Rehabilitation Collaborative (CRC)," Million Hearts®, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, content provided and maintained by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; a work of the United States government in the public domain.