Researchers at Kaiser Permanente Southern California in Oakland used its EHR system to study hypertension patterns and how to best reduce the number of people with high blood pressure.
The study, published in the Journal of Clinical Hypertension, took place from January 2009 through March 2011 and included more than 1 million people. The researchers' goals were to identify the prevalence and characteristics of patients with high blood pressure in nonprimary care versus primary care settings and to examine changes in blood pressure readings over time.
Kaiser Permanente's EHR includes a hypertension improvement program with a hypertension registry, use of evidence-based clinical care guidelines integrated into the EHR, a best practice reminder feature, staff performance metrics, medical assistant visits for blood pressure measurements and an automated voice message reminder system to notify patients of necessary appointments. The features of the EHR facilitated the study, according to the article.
The researchers found that expanding screening for hypertension to nonprimary care settings may improve hypertension detection. They noted that patients in acute care settings are less likely to follow up with a primary care physician and wrote that the approach requires an effective system to follow up, such as tracking through EHR profiles.