Readiness for Behavior Change After a Heart Attack

The purpose of this study is to test if an early appointment (within 10 days) when compared to a standard appointment (5 weeks) will affect attendance at the Cardiac Rehabilitation orientation and subsequent enrollment into cardiac rehabilitation.

Cardiac Rehabilitation is central to full recovery after a myocardial infarction or a cardiac stenting procedure. Yet, this therapy is underutilized across the nation. Henry Ford currently enrolls about 42% of eligible patients. In addition, it currently takes, on average, 42 +/-26 days from hospital discharge to enrollment in rehabilitation. During this delay, there is strong tendency to return to prior habits (sedentary lifestyle, smoking, poor nutrition, etc.) that led to the myocardial infarction in the first place. This delay is both 1) unnecessary and 2) probably harmful to the patients' readiness to make changes. The investigators seek to perform a randomized controlled trial of early (7-10 days) vs standard referral (5-6 weeks) to cardiac rehabilitation. In addition, the investigators will examine the patients' readiness to change through the first 3 months of the post-hospitalization period and correlate that to their behavior and enrollment in cardiac rehabilitation. Assessment of readiness to change will be accomplished by serial survey's, which will be administered at discharge, 2 weeks, 5 weeks, and 13 weeks after discharge. Patients will consent to take the survey and be observed in a clinical study. However, in order to avoid the Hawthorne Effect, patients they will not initially be aware of the primary hypothesis, as the investigators strongly believe this will affect the main behavior they are trying to measure. Full patient disclosure will occur at the end of the trial.