Motivating Patients to Monitor and Manage Hypertension
Only one in four U.S. adults has their hypertension well-controlled 1 . The chronic disease costs the United States an estimated $131 billion 2 annually, and with about half of adults in the country living with hypertension, it raises questions: why are so many patients not controlling it better, and what can be done to solve the problem?
In the 2021 UCSF Health Improvement Poster Symposium presentation*, Designing a Virtual Care Chat Program for Hypertension, Ali Maiorano, Lead Product Designer at CDHI, provides a gap analysis and more.
She talks about the collaboration with the Center for Digital Health Innovation (CDHI), Digital Patient Experience, Division of General Internal Medicine, and Conversa Health to build a virtual care chat program for hypertension that would engage patients, allow them to monitor their blood pressure, and make changes in their treatment plan between physician visits.
An alpha phase of the project was launched in May 2021 with three goals to:
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Remind patients to check their blood pressure
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Provide a simple mechanism for reporting
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Diagnose key elements needed to deliver the appropriate level of intervention
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Test the clinical feedback loop
Other key highlights of the presentation include the methodology used to run small, iterative tests to quickly learn and evolve the design, and lessons learned from patient interviews.
*Contributors: Ali Maiorano; Olivia Bigazzi; Tim Judson, MD, MPH; Anobel Odisho, MD; Aaron Neinstein, MD; Nat Gleason, MD
Source
1. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Hypertension Cascade: Hypertension Prevalence, Treatment and Control Estimates Among US Adults Aged 18 Years and Older Applying the Criteria from the American College of Cardiology and American Heart Association’s 2017 Hypertension Guideline—NHANES 2013–2016external icon. Atlanta, GA: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services; 2019.
2. Kirkland EB, Heincelman M, Bishu KG, et al. Trends in healthcare expenditures among US adults with hypertension: national estimates, 2003-2014. J Am Heart Assoc. 2018;7:e008731
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