New Study Links HFSA OMT-HF Education to Changes in Heart Failure Prescribing

A Cleveland Clinic retrospective pre-post study found that completing HFSA's OMT-HF clinician education program was associated with a modest increase in new SGLT2 inhibitor prescriptions among non-cardiologists treating heart-failure patients, with the strongest exploratory signal in patients with LVEF of 40% or less. The findings extend 2025 evidence that the program improved clinician confidence in initiating and optimizing guideline-directed medical therapy, though the study was associative and did not evaluate other medication classes. The release is supportive of broader SGLT2i adoption in heart failure but is unlikely to have material near-term market impact.

Analysis

The relevant read-through is incremental SGLT2 penetration in undertreated heart-failure populations, but the evidence is insufficient to revise near-term consensus estimates for Eli Lilly (LLY) or AstraZeneca (AZN). A self-selected, retrospective education cohort does not establish persistence, adherence, payer approval, or net-price realization—the variables that determine commercial value. Any immediate equity reaction should therefore be negligible; this is a utilization-directional data point rather than a demand inflection.

Over 1-3 months, the more investable signal is whether large integrated delivery networks convert education into standardized discharge and primary-care protocols. That would expand prescribing beyond specialist capacity and improve initiation after hospitalization, where discontinuity has historically limited GDMT uptake. LLY has the broader SGLT2 demand base and greater potential to monetize incremental class awareness, while AZN's Farxiga has more direct heart-failure franchise sensitivity; however, both face formulary-driven substitution and generic/competitive pressure that may limit revenue capture from higher class utilization.

The 6-18 month structural implication favors health-system software and care-management vendors only if education is paired with electronic-health-record order sets, prior-authorization automation, and pharmacy follow-up. Stand-alone clinician education is unlikely to move outcomes or drug volumes materially at scale. The contrarian view is that incremental prescribing may mostly cannibalize alternative diabetes use or concentrate in lower-risk patients, producing limited incremental net sales and no meaningful change in hospitalization economics.

Falsification: look for quarterly US heart-failure prescription growth, new-to-brand trends, and management commentary linking primary-care or post-discharge uptake to sales. Absence of sequential improvement over two quarters, or payer restrictions that increase abandonment, would invalidate the utilization thesis.

Key Decisions for Investors

• No directional trade on this release; treat as a monitoring input rather than a catalyst, given the low-impact, association-based evidence and no named commercial sponsor.
• Maintain a 1-3 month watch on AZN versus LLY: a sustained acceleration in US SGLT2 new-to-brand prescriptions and HF-specific demand would be relatively more supportive of AZN's Farxiga franchise; do not initiate without prescription-data confirmation.
• For existing AZN exposure, set an alert around quarterly product-sales guidance: trim any education-driven rally if HF prescription data fail to improve for two consecutive monthly data prints, as valuation upside requires realized volume rather than clinician-intent evidence.
• Monitor EHR-integrated care-management adoption at major health systems as the higher-conviction second-order catalyst; an announced protocol deployment tied to discharge workflows would be more commercially relevant than additional survey or education studies.