Clinician inertia was often related to the number of problems to be addressed at any given visit. An elevated blood pressure (BP) often was pushed to the bottom of a list of concerns and sometimes was overlooked.1 A process of alerts in the electronic medical record were built to alert roomers to the elevated blood pressure, prompt them to obtain a repeat blood pressure measurement after 5 minutes (the recommended timing of sitting at rest from the American Heart Association), hand out patient education material, and schedule a 2-week follow-up nurse visit for BP recheck. A 2-week follow-up was chosen because most antihypertensive medications have reached their full effect by 2 weeks.
An alert for the clinician also was designed, with interactive tools of most recent BPs and a reminder to update the patient’s problem list. The problem list was enhanced so that all BP-related labs and medications would display in 1 place in the problem list to make medication adjustments easier. Since patients were aware that their BP was elevated and would be addressed at their appointment, more clinicians were taking the extra few minutes to change medication in addition to addressing the other concerns that patients had that day. When patients returned at 2 weeks for BP checks with nursing staff (medical assistants), patients were told their BP. If it was elevated they were told the clinician would be in contact with them to adjust their medication. A telephone encounter in the electronic medical record (EMR) then was generated and sent to the clinician with the patient’s most recent blood pressuresso that medication changes could be made. Again, a standard
2-week follow-up for a blood pressure check with nursing staff
was implemented until the patient’s blood pressure was under
140/90.
A “float room” that was previously used for walk-in patient
triage was used to take blood pressures for these blood pressureonly
visits. This process utilized the clinic’s current space and
did not require addition of any extra personnel