WOONSOCKET – The Centers for Disease Control Million Hearts Initiative recognized Thundermist Health Center as a Hypertension Control Champion for 2015. One of only 18 awardees in the nation, Thundermist was recognized for its success in helping patients control high blood pressure. The Million Hearts Hypertension Control Challenge is a competition to identify practices, clinicians and health systems that have excelled in controlling their patients’ blood pressures. Nearly one in three American adults has high blood pressure, and only half of those individuals have their hypertension under control, putting them at greater risk of developing heart disease or stroke – two of the nation’s leading causes of death.
Thundermist Health Center uses a team-based, patient-centered model of care to improve hypertension control. Every member of the organization has a role in improving the health of Thundermist’s patients; the front office staff, physicians, nurse practitioners, medical assistants, behavioral health clinicians, community health team members, dietitians, the data and analytics team, the dental team and others contribute to the effort.
“Our approach is very data-driven,” Dr. David Bourassa, Thundermist’s chief medical officer, said in a statement. “In addition to encouraging innovation and teamwork, we put a lot of effort into giving teams the data they need to plan each patient’s care before the day starts. We also provide a weekly all-Thundermist dashboard that helps us to shorten improvement cycles, share best practices and recognize top performers throughout the organization.”
As medical assistants play a key role in managing patients’ high blood pressure, all of Thundermist’s medical assistants participate in competency and training on techniques and influencing variables when taking blood pressures.
Thundermist improved the number of hypertensive patients with controlled blood pressure by more than 5 percent between 2014 and 2015, the agency reported. Thanks to these efforts, nearly 300 more hypertensive patients of Thundermist now live with well-controlled blood pressure.
Million Hearts launched its challenge in 2012 to recognize clinicians and health care teams across the country for helping their patients protect heart health. “Clinicians are our first line of defense against the hundreds of thousands of deaths caused by high blood pressure each year,” said CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden. “We applaud the 2015 Champions and hope other health care teams learn from these successes and save even more lives.”
To be eligible, entrants shared verifiable high blood pressure control data and highlighted successful strategies and best practices adopted by the practice or system, such as the use of health information technology and team-based care. All Champions achieved control rates of 70 percent or greater for their adult patients.
