Abstract 325

Background:Patients hospitalized with a principal discharge diagnosis of heart failure (HF) are often treated for other common conditions causing shortness of breath such as pneumonia (PNA) and exacerbated COPD. We hypothesized that this pattern could be a more general phenomenon and that patients hospitalized with a principal diagnosis of any of these 3 conditions would often be treated concomitantly with medications indicated for the others. Such treatment would signal frequent diagnostic uncertainty or the concomitant presence of more than one acute condition in real-world practice.