Emergency Department patients with elevated blood pressure, particularly those without a prior diagnosis of hypertension, are inadequately informed and under-referred for follow-up care.
Of ED patients with elevated BP, one third had no prior history, and the remainder were suboptimally controlled hypertensive patients. Both groups were inadequately informed of their elevated BPs, and the group with no prior history of HTN, the population likely to obtain the greatest health benefit, had the lowest referral rate.
Baumann et al. (Thu,) studied this question.