Date of Award

Fall 11-17-2024

Document Type

Scholarly Project

Degree Name

Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP)

First Advisor

Hilary Morgan

Second Advisor

Heather Sailor

Abstract

Practice Problem: Per U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (2020), hypertension (HTN) is prevalent in active and retired military personnel with 13% of those in active duty and in “more than one in three Veterans…making it the most common chronic condition for Veterans” (p. 1). Per the Electronic Quality Measure (eQM) portal, a PACT clinic in a CBOC is scoring well below the national and facility benchmarks, showing a need for an intervention that will improve HTN management.

PICOT: For current veteran patients ages 18-85 assigned to a PACT (P), what is the effect of nurse-led telehealth blood pressure (BP) check visits (I) compared to current practices (C) in improving the capture of BP readings by 5% in eQM (O) in a 4-week period (T)?

Evidence: Implementation of virtual modalities can improve HTN management.

Intervention: Implementing telehealth visits via Veterans Video Connect (VVC) and reaching out to Veterans who are on the eQM generated fall out list to capture BP readings. Obtaining the BP reading will allow the patient to drop off the fall out list, improving the eQM measure “ihd53h_ec.” If the BP reading is below 140/90, the Veteran will also drop off the fall out list.

Outcome: After the project’s implementation of VVC visits, the rate of BP capture increased significantly to 76%, which was an improvement of 18.98%.

Conclusion: There is a clinical and statistical positive effect of nurse-led telehealth BP check visits compared to current practices in improving the capture and measurement of BP readings among current veteran patients ages 18-85 assigned to a PACT at a VA Community Based Outpatient Clinic.

Comments

Scholarly project submitted to the University of St. Augustine for Health Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Nursing Practice.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Share

COinS