The need for palliative care for heart failure patients has been attracting attention, but the system for providing such care is not yet fully established in Japan. Iizuka Hospital is a 1048-bed acute care hospital located in Fukuoka, Japan. The Heart Support Team (HST) was established to provide palliative care for heart failure at the hospital. After the HST was launched in May 2017, 168 referrals for palliative care intervention for heart failure patients by March 2022. Twenty-five (14.8%) met the intervention cases’ additional palliative care treatment criteria. The Integrated Palliative Outcome Scale was administered to 11 consecutive patients from April 1 to 30, 2021. In establishing and operating the HST, the challenge was recruiting, training, and creating a system to sustain the system. Creating the HST in collaboration with staff specializing in palliative care, psychiatric care, and cardiovascular specialists was the first step in establishing a method for palliative care to heart failure patients in an acute care hospital.

Objective: This study aimed to investigate the feasibility of a patient registry system for assessing PCT (palliative care team) by PRO (Patient-reported outcome) in Japan. Methods: We operated a patient registry system with electronic data collection at eight hospitals in 2021 in Japan. We consecutively included newly referred patients for a month and followed up with them for a month. IPOS or ESAS obtained as PRO at the start of the intervention, three days later, and every week after. The primary endpoint was the response rate to the symptom rating scale by patients and providers. Results: 318 patients were enrolled. The patient response rate was 59.1% at intervention and 37.0% after intervention, and the medical provider response rate was 98.4% at intervention and 70.3% after intervention. Interviews with PCT members indicated that participants required support to input PRO responses required support and paper questionnaire was better and that managing the survey date and overall management was burdensome. Discussion: Although only about half of the patients were able to respond to the PRO, this was the same level as in previous studies. The system and its operation method have many problems. We found that improvements such as reducing items and making the patient interviews paper-based are necessary to expand the system nationwide.