In order to improve the diagnosis and management of pediatric hypertension, researchers in a recent experiment suggest integrated an electronic health record-linked clinical decision support tool into physicians’ workflow. They randomly assigned 20 clinics within a single healthcare system to a clinical decision support system that automatically displayed patients’ blood pressure and notified clinicians about the existence of hypertension through its electronic health records system. Some key highlights include:

• The EHR-linked decision support tool provided clinicians with a set of tailored orders to follow through on management of the recognized hypertension.
• >31,000 patients between the ages of 10 and 17 years were evaluated over 2 years, 1.7% of whom had hypertension.
• Among the clinicians who had access to clinical decision support, hypertension was recognized in 54.9% of patients over 6 months, vs 21.3% in the group of clinicians who didn’t have the tool.
• Within 6 months of the diagnosis, 17.1% of patients in the EHR-clinical decision support group were referred to a dietitian or weight loss or exercise program, compared to only 3.9% in control patients.