Quality Insights of Pennsylvania   
Improving Hypertension and Diabetes Care with Health IT  
Welcome Back to the Quality Insights PA DOH Project      
  
As you are aware, the Pennsylvania Department of Health (PA DOH) has been awarded a grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to prevent and control diabetes, heart disease, obesity and associated risk factors. Quality Insights of Pennsylvania, a division of WVMI & Quality Insights, has been awarded the contract under this grant. We want to thank you for your commitment to this important work and look forward to our continued collaboration. Your practice is one of nearly 175 who have committed to this project to date. Quality Insights is actively recruiting more practices throughout the state to join this initiative.
 
Quality Insights has created this distribution group as a means of disseminating current information to your team members. You will be receiving regular updates about the project, as well as any related news announcements, resources and educational opportunities related to this project via these e-bulletins. 
 
Project Goals & Activities
As a reminder, our goals and activities for this project will be to:
  • Collect monthly data on NQF measure 0018 - Controlling High Blood Pressure
  • Collect monthly data on NQF measure 0059 - Controlling Hemoglobin A1C (HbA1c) levels > 9.0% (poor control) 
  • Focus on undiagnosed hypertension, screening for prediabetes and those at high risk for diabetes
  • Analyze data and workflows and offer recommendations for improvement
  • Create referral processes to Diabetes Self-Management Education (DSME) and Diabetes Prevention Programs (DPP)
  • Encourage use of clinical decision support, evidence-based protocols
  • Increase patient engagement and the use of patient portals for education
  • Create useful tools and resources for your patients and staff
  • Share best practices and lessons learned
May 2016 Focus: Controlling Blood Pressure in PA
Quality Insights is kicking off the relaunch of this project by focusing on hypertension in the May e-newsletters. Please take a few minutes to review the following information and resources available to you as we tackle the important topic of controlling blood pressure in Pennsylvania.
___________________________________________________________
Rates of High Blood Pressure Vary by Geography

High blood pressure is more common in some areas of the United States than in others. Below is a map showing the self-reported rate of hypertension by state in 2011. However, this likely under reports the true effect of hypertension in each state. In 2011, Pennsylvania's self-reported prevalence was 28.0 to 29.1 percent. Pennsylvania has a huge opportunity to improve its rate of high blood pressure. 

The Million Hearts� national campaign has a goal of hypertension control greater than 80 percent by the end of 2016. Healthy People 2020 program has a goal of less than 26.9 percent of patients having high blood pressure. 

Let's all do our part to make that happen.
___________________________________________________________
SAVE THE DATE: 
World Hypertension Day is May 17, 2016

World Hypertension Day (WHD) was first inaugurated in May 2005 and has become an annual event ever since. The purpose of the WHD is to promote public awareness of hypertension and to encourage citizens of all countries to prevent and control this silent killer, the modern epidemic.
 
The theme for WHD 2016 is Know Your Blood Pressure. The goal of this special day is to increase high blood pressure (BP) awareness in all populations around the world. 

Please review the additional World Hypertension Day resources below:
___________________________________________________________

heart and steth According to the 2011-2012 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), a cross-sectional survey of the non-institutionalized U.S. population that combines interviews and physical examinations, 1 in 3 U.S. adults (estimated at approximately 71 million people) has high blood pressure and almost half of these individuals (48.2 percent) do not have their blood pressure under control. 

Closer examination of the population with uncontrolled blood pressure reveals that 36.2 percent (estimated at approximately 13 million people) are neither aware of their hypertension nor taking antihypertensive medications. A common assumption might be that these individuals are among the uninsured population without regular access to the health care system and who, consequently, have not had an opportunity for detection and diagnosis of hypertension. However, data from analysis of 2009-2012 NHANES show that among the unaware, untreated, and uncontrolled hypertensive population:
  • 81.8 percent have health insurance,
  • 82.5 percent have a usual source of care, and
  • 61.7 percent have received care 2 or more times in the past year
The data suggest that potentially millions of people with uncontrolled high blood pressure are being seen by health care professionals each year but remain undiagnosed and "hiding in plain sight" within clinical settings. 

Read more about Hypertension: Hiding in Plain Sight in this Journal of American Medical Association (JAMA) article.
___________________________________________________________
Watch These Hypertension-Focused Recorded Webinars

Hypertension Hiding in Plain Sight
Chronic conditions that are not well controlled remain a significant health issue for clinicians. In an era when clinicians are assuming increasing responsibility for health outcomes and the subsequent financial implications, it is critical to understand today's healthcare status of our patients which will impact the future of every practice. 

In this webinar session, Quality Insights of Delaware Medical Director Dr. Edward Sobel takes a closer look at the status of hypertension and its significant implications for clinicians and practices. The discussion includes both an evaluation of the problem as well as some solutions. 

AHA High Blood Pressure Treatment Algorithm and Recorded Webinar
___________________________________________________________
Learn More About the EHR Innovations for Improving Hypertension Challenge
  
The goal of the EHR Innovations for Improving Hypertension Challenge is to gather specific descriptions of health IT tools and approaches used by individual practices to implement an evidence-based blood pressure (BP) treatment protocol that leads to improvement in practice-wide blood pressure control (Phase 1), and identifies models for quick and widespread intervention. A comprehensive clinical decision support (CDS) approach supports these five protocol elements:
  1. Blood pressure measurement/recording
  2. Blood pressure follow-up
  3. Initiation and titration of medications
  4. Patient engagement
  5. Workup/referral for poor control
Practices documented the electronic health record (EHR) tools they use to implement an evidence-based BP control protocol, as well as described the details and results of the implementation. Practices demonstrated high BP control levels and/or improvement ensuring that their tools and strategies merit replication across practice settings.


 

Find out which practices were Phase 1 Challenge winners and learn more about Phase 2 of the EHR Innovations for Improving Hypertension Challenge by watching this webinar recording.

___________________________________________________________
Contact:
Rhonda Dodson
1.877.346.6180, Ext. 7711
  
Publication Number: PADOH-LF-050616