Connextcare Receives Awards from the American Heart Association and American Medical Association

The American Heart Association (AHA) and the American Medical Association (AMA) have recognized ConnextCare for success in their treatment of high blood pressure, diabetes and high cholesterol in patients.

The American Heart Association’s ‘Check. Change. Control. Cholesterol.’ and ‘Target: Type 2 Diabetes’ programs have recognized ConnextCare for improving quality of care through detection and management of patient’s with high cholesterol, Type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular risk factors. This is achieved through empowering patients with evidence-based strategies and tools and adopting clinical change.

The American Medical Association has also recognized ConnextCare for achieving Gold status through the ‘Target: BP’ program for having 70% or greater blood pressure control and commuting to accurate measurement among ConnextCare’s adult patient population. The ‘Target: BP’ program is a national initiative co-led by the AMA and AHA and celebrates physician practices and health systems that are making the management of hypertension a priority.

These accomplishments come after ConnextCare has spent years updating and implementing new procedures to control high cholesterol and blood pressure in their patients. “The team at ConnextCare has been working together with several statewide projects over the past 6 years to improve our processes for managing patients with hypertension and diabetes. One of these efforts includes a revised pre-visit planning process where clinical support staff review the patient’s charts to ensure any testing or medication needs for hypertension and diabetes are evaluated before each patient visit.” stated Nancy Deavers, Senior Vice President and Chief Nursing and Quality Officer at ConnextCare. “We also routinely run reports from our data bases to identify patients with elevated blood pressure scores that have not had Hypertension diagnosis on their problem list. Lastly, we have invested in a Home Blood Pressure monitoring program where Registered Nurse care managers teach the patients how to take their blood pressure, provide the cuff for use and follow-up with blood pressure readings, being the liaison between provider and patient in between visits. I believe these efforts have helped us move forward with continuous improvements as demonstrated in our quality measures!”