JASON MITCHELL, Chief Medical and Clinical Transformation Officer, Presbyterian Healthcare Services (Albuquerque)
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“I think for us, and the rest of the nation, hypertension is the biggest health concern. It is really a pandemic the nation is not treating adequately, with only 50 percent of individuals in control. What’s interesting about it is it’s really easy to treat, the medication’s inexpensive and the interventions are minimal. It affects 1 in 3 adults across the nation, and we can have a profound impact.
We started a population health management initiative in 2013 for hypertension. The initiative was about hardwiring standardized interventions across the enterprise and at a local level in our practices. It involved basic things, like asking, ‘How do you take a blood pressure? When it’s high, when do you retake the blood pressure?’ We created registries and alerts so providers know when someone’s had a high blood pressure that they need to reach out to the patient again. We created standard processes for the treatment and refill of medication.
When we began the project in 2013, we had about 60 percent of our patients with high blood pressure under control. By 2014 we were at 75 percent control, and at the end of this year we had 84 percent of our hypertension patients under control. We increased to an 84 percent control and, at the same time, uncovered the hidden population of patients with hypertension that no one had diagnosed.”
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