Press Release

2021 Hypertension Control Exemplar

Million Hearts^® recognizes Quality Insights as a Hypertension Control Exemplar for transforming their quality improvement support services to meet the needs of health care organizations committed to improving patients’ hypertension during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Successful Strategies

Over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, telehealth, population health management, and remote patient monitoring became essential approaches to manage chronic diseases. As a result, Quality Insights had to adjust the focus of their quality improvement approaches quickly. Quality Insights ran reports for its providers to identify patients with hypertension who needed follow-up visits.

Quality Insights also continued to assist practices with cleaning up the data in their medical records to improve accuracy of their reports. They were also able to work closely with practices medical assistants to establish new systems to schedule virtual visits for patients to continue their continuity of care.

Given the decrease in in-person visits, Quality Insights also transitioned from providing technical assistance with setting up home blood pressure monitoring loaner programs to helping the health care organizations bill health insurance companies for blood pressure monitor devices. Quality Insights helped one health center as they engaged with a Medicaid Managed Care Organization to stock home blood pressure monitors for qualifying members.

Quality Insights quickly realized that changes were needed on how they provided technical assistance to participating health care organizations. When smaller practices were faced with remote patient monitoring (RPM) implementation hurdles, Quality Insights connected practices with the statewide Health Information Exchange, Delaware Health Information Network (DHIN), to explore if DHIN could assist with closing the RPM gaps.

Additionally, in-person Quality Insights site visits became virtual visits. Materials were printed and mailed to practices rather than delivered in person and were also available on the Quality Insights website.

“Hypertension control during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 was a team effort across Delaware and Pennsylvania. Quality Insights utilized virtual and other efforts to assist practices with their patients.”

—Ashley Biscardi, practice transformation project lead, Quality Insights