Introduction:
Patient ratings of their experience of care are part of the “Triple Aim”. Improvements are highly valued by health care organizations, but are hard to achieve.
Hypothesis:
We tested the effect of a telehealth intervention on satisfaction with hypertension care.
Methods:
Hyperlink 3 is an ongoing pragmatic cluster-randomized trial in 3072 patients with uncontrolled hypertension in 21 primary care clinics in HealthPartners, an integrated health system in Minnesota and Wisconsin. Clinics were randomized to Clinic-based Care (CC, 9 clinics, 1648 patients) or Telehealth Care (TC, 12 clinics, 1424 patients). CC patients received guideline-based hypertension care in face-to-face visits. TC patients were additionally offered home blood pressure (BP) telemonitoring with pharmacist care management. Patients were surveyed at baseline and after 6 months of study enrollment and asked to rate their hypertension care in the previous 6 months on a scale of 0-10. We compared change in the proportion of patients rating their care at the highest level (9 or 10).
Results:
In the TC group, about 37% of patients attended an intake pharmacist visit and 434 (30%) participated in home BP telemonitoring. Baseline surveys were completed by 1719 (56%) of patients at baseline (goal 50% completion) and 1301 (76%) of those completing the baseline survey completed the 6 month survey (goal 75% completion). Baseline survey respondents’ mean age was 62 y (non-respondents 58 y), 46% were men (non-respondents 48%), 19% were black (non-respondents 20%), and mean BP was 164/93 mm Hg (non-respondents 164/95 mm Hg.) Nearly all patients (over 90%) took antihypertensive medications (median 2). Hypertension care ratings of 9 or 10 were 27.9% at baseline and 30.2% at 6 months in CC, compared with 29.0% at baseline and 39.5% at 6 months in TC. The odds ratio (OR) for change over time in 9 or 10 ratings was 1.11 (95% CI 0.87 - 1.42) in CC, and 1.61 (95% CI 1.26 - 2.07) in TC. The OR for change in 9 or 10 ratings over time in TC vs CC was 1.45 (95% CI 1.03 - 2.06).
Conclusions:
Home BP telemonitoring with pharmacist care management increased the proportion of patients who highly rated their experience of hypertension care, even though only a minority of the TC patients received the intervention.
Integrating Depression Care Management into Medicare Home Health Reduces Risk of 30- and 60-Day Hospitalization: The Depression Care for Patients at Home Cluster-Randomized Trial
