- FRIDAY, May 2 (HealthDay News) — A veterans' facility made some
small but significant changes in the way it was handling high blood
pressure among patients and got a small but significant improvement in
blood pressure control, a new study shows.

It might not sound like much — an increase from 61.8 percent to 64.3
percent of veterans reaching the blood pressure goal below 140/90. But
that gain meant that nearly 1,400 people had improved blood pressure
control in a group of nearly 54,000, said study author Dr. Christianne L.
Roumie, an assistant professor of medicine at Vanderbilt University and a
staff physician for the Veterans Affairs Tennessee Valley Healthcare
System.

Achieving that goal nationwide would be a significant improvement,
since most institutions have only 30 percent to 50 percent of high blood
pressure cases under control, she said.

“We were interested in improving the quality of our hypertension [high
blood pressure] control and formed a committee,” Roumie said. “The
committee looked at the barriers to care, where the problems were, and
what we could do to fix them.”

Some of the changes involved the health-care providers themselves. “We
improved the way the nurses were doing blood pressure so they all did it
in a standardized way,” Roumie said. “That prevented measurement
error.”

At the same time, treatment guidelines were established for staffers,
with a system allowing feedback from doctors about how well they were
being followed. Group practices were audited, with feedback on the success
of their efforts.

“There was some patient education, so that the patients could track
their own blood pressure and know what their goals were,” Roumie said.

The 2.5 percent increase in blood pressure control was achieved within
18 weeks. The national impact of reaching such a goal would be significant
since it's estimated that 73 million Americans have high blood pressure, a
major risk factor for heart disease and stroke, Roumie said.

The findings were to be presented Friday at the American Heart
Association's annual Scientific Forum on Quality of Care and Outcomes
Research in Cardiovascular Disease and Stroke, in Baltimore.

Other medical centers wanting to improve their patients' blood pressure
control don't need to follow the Tennessee system's approach step by step,
Roumie said.

“We focused on educational activities specific for our site,” she said.
“This does have the potential to spread to other institutions, but each
institution needs to look at the barriers in its own health system and
design interventions to address those areas.”

More information

Learn more about high blood pressure and controlling it from the U.S. National Library of Medicine.