May is national high blood pressure education month: We’ve got this!

Many resources are available for health professionals to support hypertension prevention and management and educate others. To support that effort, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)’s Division for Heart Disease and Stroke Prevention has put together these sets of educational materials for health professionals and patients:

• Hypertension Communications Kit: Health professionals can share these social media messages, graphics, and resources to educate their audiences about hypertension.
• Hypertension Patient Education Handouts: These fact sheets and handouts can help patients understand how hypertension affects their health and how to make healthy lifestyle changes.
• Hypertension Tools and Training: These materials can help health professionals develop and support programs for preventing and managing hypertension.

 

Visit the Million Hearts® website for more resources designed for health professionals. Million Hearts^® is a national initiative co-led by CDC and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). Million Hearts^® aims to prevent 1 million heart attacks and strokes within five years.

 

Measure Up: Controlling High Blood Pressure (CBP) HEDIS® measure

The HEDIS measure Controlling High Blood Pressure (CBP) assesses adults ages 18–85 with a diagnosis of hypertension and whose blood pressure was properly controlled based on the following criteria:

• Adults 18–59 years of age whose blood pressure was <140/90 mm Hg
• Adults 60–85 years of age, with a diagnosis of diabetes, whose blood pressure was <140/90 mm Hg
• Adults 60–85 years of age, without a diagnosis of diabetes, whose blood pressure was <150/90 mm Hg

 

Patient claims should include one systolic reading and one diastolic reading:

CPT II Code	Most recent systolic blood pressure
3074F	<130 mm Hg
3075F	130-139 mm Hg
3077F	≥ 140 mm Hg
CPT II Code	Most recent diastolic blood pressure
3078F	<80 mm Hg
3079F	80-89 mm Hg
3080F	≥ 90 mm Hg

 

When charting your patient’s blood pressure readings, in addition to the systolic and diastolic readings, and dates, if the patient has an elevated blood pressure, but does not have hypertension, note the reason for follow-up.

 

Additional tips for talking to patients:

• Continue to educate patients about the risks of hypertension
• Encourage weight loss, regular exercise and diet
• Advise patients who are smoking to quit
• Talk about chronic stress and ways to cope with it in a healthy way

 

HEDIS® is a registered trademark of the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA)

 

Resource: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/bloodpressure/educational_materials.htm

 

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