Hypertension Telemanagement in African Americans

BACKGROUND: Recent studies demonstrated that successful chronic disease management requires a coordinated effort that includes health care providers who follow recent clinical guidelines in their everyday practice, educated patients who are adherent to their prescribed treatment plans, and comprehensive patient-provider communication. Studies employing telecommunication technologies have been successful in affecting the major components of chronic disease care, including physician practice patterns, patient adherence to therapy, and patient-provider communication. These studies were focused mainly on an improvement of a single component of the clinical care process. To date there have been no studies evaluating a coordinated approach that concurrently employs all of these components in an integrated framework linked to primary care. In this study researchers propose to evaluate a multi-component telemanagement system providing integrated support to both clinicians and patients in implementing hypertension treatment guidelines according to the JNC 7 Report. DESIGN NARRATIVE: Researchers will use the HAT system as a test platform for their intervention. The HAT system was developed to facilitate implementation of current clinical guidelines and to provide an integrated, multi-component chronic disease management intervention. HAT was designed as an Internet-based telemedicine system that (1) provides ongoing education to patients about their chronic disease, (2) helps patients follow their self-care plans, and (3) helps health care practitioners treat and monitor their patients' self-management process according to current clinical guidelines. The HAT system consists of (1) patient units (a computer or palmtop connected with a disease-specific testing device, such as a blood pressure monitor), (2) a HAT server that analyzes and stores self-testing results, and (3) clinician units that are used to review patient results on the Web. During each telecommunication session patients perform self-testing and receive structured disease-specific education, patient-tailored counseling, and advice on how to follow their individual self-care plans based on the current results of self-testing. The information for patients includes text, audio, and video components. In instances of patient noncompliance with self-testing, medication nonadherence, or failure to follow the physician-prescribed treatment plan, the system gives feedback to the patient to motivate better compliance and alerts the patient's physician and/or nurse who may contact the patient as well. This design can be easily adapted for any chronic condition by utilizing an appropriate disease-specific testing device and reprogramming decision support logic according to the particular disease management guidelines. In previous studies researchers have demonstrated (1) a high level of acceptance of the HAT system by patients from a low-income, inner-city area without previous computer experience, (2) acceptance of the system by physicians and nurses taking care of their patients, and (3) the validity of self-testing results in adult patients who used HAT. The system is currently being used to evaluate efficacy of home telemanagement of patients with asthma in the NIH- and ALA-funded studies. In this proposed study, researchers seek to advance their understanding of the applicability and utility of the HAT technology by focusing on its impact on African Americans with hypertension.