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Marc L Rivo

Publications and source records attributed to Marc L Rivo.

4 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMedDate not supplied

The hypertension management program: identifying opportunities for improvement.

To date, relatively few programs have been evaluated that were designed to affect the clinical practice patterns of primary care physicians who treat patients with hypertension. In particular, studies that have evaluated blood pressure control as a clinical outcome before and after an intervention are lacking. The Hypertension Management Program, developed by Applied Health Outcomes, is a quality improvement program designed to improve the medical management of hypertension in population-based health care settings. This program is in the process of continuing to collect baseline data from health maintenance organizations, conducting physician-focused interventions designed for improving clinical care, and collecting postintervention data between 6 and 12 months after the intervention is completed to determine its effect. The authors present the rationale for conducting large-scale hypertension management programs that measure outcomes, as well as preliminary baseline and postintervention data from the Hypertension Management Program, based on a current database of more than 1.9 million individuals enrolled in eight health care plans.

Adult↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Effect of a primary care physician-focused, population-based approach to blood pressure control.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: A large majority of hypertensive patients are cared for in primary care settings, and most of them do not have adequately controlled blood pressure. AvMed Health Plan, a large Florida-based, nonprofit, physician network health maintenance organization, initiated a program to assist primary care physicians to achieve a greater degree of blood pressure control in their hypertensive patients. Concomitantly, a study was designed to determine whether this physician-focused intervention improved blood pressure control in these patients. METHODS: Data were collected from pharmacy claims and medical charts for random samples of treated hypertensive patients prior to and following a 6-month educational intervention aimed at providers. Analysis of the data sets was conducted to determine what percentage of subjects achieved target blood pressure goals before and after the intervention. RESULTS: At baseline, 41% of the total population had achieved a target blood pressure of <140/90 mm Hg; 52% achieved this goal following the intervention. When target blood pressure goals were defined as <140/90 mm Hg for nondiabetic subjects and < 130/85 mm Hg for diabetic subjects, 36% of the total population achieved target blood pressure goals at baseline; 47% achieved these goals following the intervention. CONCLUSIONS: A physician-focused intervention significantly improved blood pressure control in diabetic and nondiabetic hypertensive patients enrolled in AvMed Health Plan.

Adolescent↗