Lesley Mitchell, Bilingual Certified Medical Assistant; Shirley Roberts, Clinic Nurse Manager; Fanny Vazquez, Bilingual Front Office Assistant
GRACE Community Clinic was awarded Gold status in the Target BP Program for the third year in a row. Target BP is an evidenced-based hypertension control program in a ceremony led by the American Heart Association’s National Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Eduardo Sanchez.
It is a call to action motivating medical practices, practitioners and health services organizations to prioritize blood pressure control. This Program recognizes healthcare providers who attain high levels of blood pressure control in their patient populations, particularly those who achieve 70% to 80% or higher control.
Hypertension is the first catalyst in the “domino effect” chain that can ultimately lead to a number of devastating consequences including stroke, heart failure, sexual dysfunction, vision loss, heart attack, and kidney disease/failure.
An estimated 85.7 million adults (roughly 1 in 3) in the U.S. have hypertension; 45.9%, which accounts fo 36.7 million individuals, of those with hypertension are not controlled. Taking into account the cost of healthcare services and medications and missed days of work, the associated cost of hypertension is estimated to be $48.6 billion each year.
Changes implemented that have enabled us to reach this goal in our practice include:
- Increased education and collaboration with our providers
- Implemented the new 2017 Guideline for the Prevention, Detection, Evaluation and Management of High Blood Pressure in Adults.
- Increased Educational and Assessment Efforts with Clients
- Nutritional Classes
- Hypertension Classes
- Provider Visits
- Nurse Visits
- Staff and Clinical Volunteer Education on the 7 Simple Tips to Get Accurate Blood Pressure Readings
- Providing B/P machines to hypertensive clients with proper education on taking BPs and using BP log
We are very excited to see positive outcomes for our clients with these efforts, and hopefully, will be able to prevent some of these co-morbidities. We are projecting even better results with our next submission of data to the AMA. A huge thank you to all our volunteer providers and clinical staff for helping us achieve this goal for our GRACE clients!
