CHICAGO (October 21, 2009)--A program to get more doctors to follow treatment guidelines isn't helping hospitalized patients with heart failure, a new study suggest.

The study says most patients are discharged without getting widely recommended and inexpensive pills.

Only one-third of more than 12,000 patients eligible for the drugs got them, even though they were treated at 201 hospitals that had voluntarily enrolled in the American Heart Association's Get with the Guidelines program.

The study authors offered some theories, from lack of marketing for the decades-old drugs to concerns about their safety.

The main drug studied, spironolactone, has been shown to reduce hospitalizations and deaths, but it also can be hard on the kidneys and, when used in the wrong patients, side effects can be deadly.

The study appeared in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association.