Doctors and pharmacists work together to improve blood pressure control

Physician-pharmacist collaboration improves blood pressure control, according to a new study in the Archives of Internal Medicine by a group at the University of Iowa. The research involved 402 patients with uncontrolled blood pressure at 6 different clinics. The clinics were assigned to a control group and an intervention group. In the intervention group, the doctors and pharmacists discussed medication requirements whereas the control group simply followed usual protocols, with doctors prescribing and pharmacists filling prescriptions and advising patients of any issues.

One of the major problems with blood pressure control is that people often don’t follow the advice of their doctor and/or pharmacist when it comes to medication. Sometimes they take the wrong dose at the wrong times or simply stop taking medication altogether. The Iowa study found that patients in both the control group and intervention group improved their adherence to recommendations. However, while the adherence in the control group improved by 8.1%, it went up by 55.4% among patients in the intervention group.

Blood pressure among patients in both groups also went down. But the drop among patients in the intervention was much greater. The average drop for the intervention group was 20 points in systolic blood pressure and almost 10 points diastolic. But in the control group, the number were only 6.8 systolic and 4.5 diastolic. Overall, blood pressure was only controlled in about 30% of patients in the control group but in almost 64% of intervention group patients.
 

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