Current efforts to control high blood pressure (BP) are failing in the United States and globally.
The first World Health Organization (WHO) global report on hypertension found that only 54% of adults with hypertension are diagnosed, 42% get treatment, and just 21% have their hypertension controlled.
In the United States, almost half (48%) of adults have high BP, defined as a systolic BP > 130 mm Hg, or a diastolic BP > 80 mm Hg, or are taking medication for high BP, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Only about one in four adults (22.5%) with high BP have their BP under control.
High BP is a major risk factor for coronary heart disease, heart failure, and stroke, and the problem of controlling it is only getting worse. In 2024, the American Heart Association estimates that, “among adults, prevalence of hypertension will increase from 51.2% in 2020 to 61.0% in 2050.”
Pharmacists Most Effective
Though many factors contribute to hypertension, researchers have found that the kind of specialist leading the hypertension team may play a role in success. Currently, most BP control teams are led by physicians in primary care.
In a recent meta-analysis involving 100 randomized controlled trials and more than 90,000 patients in Circulation, Katherine T. Mills, PhD, School of Public Health, Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana, and colleagues found that, while all the groups studied who led BP control efforts were successful in reducing BP, pharmacist- and community health worker–led teams saw the biggest reductions.
Those groups’ efforts resulted in the greatest systolic BP drops: −7.3 mm Hg (pharmacists) and −7.1 mm Hg (community health workers). Groups led by nurses and physicians saw systolic changes of −3 and −2.4 mm Hg, respectively.
Similarly, pharmacist- and community health worker–led efforts saw the greatest diastolic BP reductions (−3.8 and −3.1 mm Hg), compared with nurse-led (−1.6) and physician-led (−1.2) efforts.
Reductions Enough to Cut Cardiovascular Disease Risk
The reduction numbers for pharmacists are clinically meaningful, Mills said in an interview. “It’s greater than a lot of what we see from individual lifestyle changes,” such as reducing sodium intake or increasing physical activity.
“It’s a big enough blood pressure change to have meaningful reduction in risk of cardiovascular disease,” she said.
This evidence that the leader of the team matters is particularly important because the treatment of hypertension is not in doubt. Something else is not working the way it should.
“We have basically all the scientific evidence we need in terms of what interventions work. But there’s a big gap between that and what’s actually being done in the real world,” she said.
Mills said she was not surprised that pharmacists got the best results “because so much of it has to do with titrating medications and finding the right kind of medications for each patient.”
Additionally, BP management and control falls right into pharmacists’ wheelhouse, Mills noted, including evaluating medication side effects and talking to patients about medication adherence.
Why Pharmacists May Be More Successful
In an accompanying editorial, Ross T. Tsuyuki, PharmD, with the EPICORE Centre, Division of Cardiology, University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, and coauthors said the Mills study provides further data to support pharmacists leading BP control efforts, but it’s not the data that have been keeping the model from changing. The barriers include turf wars and lack of legislative change.
The editorialists also said having pharmacist-led BP teams is only the first step. “We need pharmacists to independently prescribe,” they wrote.
“Since individual states govern the scope of practice of pharmacists,” the editorialists wrote, “we have the enormous task of changing regulations to allow pharmacists to independently prescribe for hypertension. But it can be done. The Canadian province of Alberta allows pharmacists to prescribe. And more recently, Idaho. While most states allow some sort of collaborative (dependent) prescribing, that is only a first step.”
Allowing pharmacists to independently prescribe will help populations who do not have a physician or can’t get access to a physician, the editorialists wrote. But changing state legislation would be a lengthy and complex effort.
Physician-Led BP Control Model ‘Seems to Fail Miserably’
Coauthor of the editorial, Florian Rader, MD, MSc, medical director of the Hypertension Center of Excellence at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, California, said in an interview that, currently, physician-led teams are the norm, “and that model seems to fail miserably.”
He offered several key reasons for that. In primary care, patients with hypertension often have other problems — they may have high cholesterol or diabetes. “They may have acute illnesses that bother them as well as hypertension that doesn’t bother them,” he said.
Physicians tend to find excuses not to increase or add BP medications, Rader said. “We tend then to blame ‘white coat effect’ or say ‘you’re just nervous today.’ ”
Pharmacists, comparatively, are more protocol driven, he said. “They essentially look at blood pressure and they have an algorithm in their mind. If the blood pressure hits the guideline-stated bar, start this medication. If it hits another bar, increase or add another medication.”
Rader said turf wars are also keeping physician-led teams from changing, fueled by fears that patients will seek care from pharmacists instead of physicians.
“I don’t think the pharmacists will steal a single patient,” Rader said. “If a physician had a healthcare partner like a pharmacist to optimize blood pressure, then [patients] come back to the physician with normalized BP on the right medications. I think it’s a total win-win. I think we just have to get over that.”
Pharmacist-led warfarin clinics are very well established, Rader said, “but for whatever reason, when it comes to blood pressure, physicians are a little bit more hesitant.”
Collaboration Yes, Independent No
Hypertension expert Donald J. DiPette, MD, Health Sciences Distinguished Professor in the Department of Internal Medicine at University of South Carolina, Columbia, said he completely agrees with Mills and colleagues’ conclusion. “Pharmacists and community health workers are most effective at leading BP intervention implementation and should be prioritized in future hypertension control efforts.”
The conclusion “is in line with the thinking of major organizations,” said DiPette, who helped develop the WHO’s most recent pharmacological treatment of hypertension guidelines. “WHO suggests that pharmacological treatment of hypertension can be provided by nonphysician professionals such as pharmacists and nurses as long as the following conditions are met: Proper training, prescribing authority, specific management protocols, and physician oversight.”
DiPette strongly believes BP control efforts should be supervised by a physician, but that could come in different ways. He suggested a collaborative but physician-supervised development of a protocol. Everyone contributes, but the physician signs off on it.
As for the Idaho example of independent practice for pharmacists, DiPette said he doesn’t think that will make a big difference in control rates. “That’s still not team-based care.”
Community Health Workers Key
He said he was also glad to see community healthcare workers emerge as the next-most-effective group after pharmacists to lead BP control teams. This is particularly important as BP control efforts globally need to consider the cultural experience of individual communities. “The community worker is on the ground, and can help overcome some of the cultural barriers,” he said.
“The key is to focus on team-based care and moving away from silo practice,” DiPette said.
Physicians, he said, often fall into “clinical or therapeutic inertia,” where BP is concerned. “We fail to titrate or add additional hypertensive medications even when they’re clearly indicated by the blood pressure. This is a problem not with the individual patient or the healthcare system, this is on us as physicians.”
Nonphysicians are more aligned with following protocols and guidelines, irrespective of the dynamics of what’s going on, he said.
And following protocols rigidly is a good thing for hypertension. “We’re not overtreating hypertension,” he emphasized. “We’re undertreating it.”
Reversing the trend on hypertension will take a sea change in medicine — changing institutions, systems, and individuals who have been doing things the same way for decades, he said.
“Our hypertension control rates are dismal,” DiPette said. “What’s more alarming is they’re going down. That’s the urgency. That’s the burning platform. We must strongly consider doing something different.”
Tsuyuki has received investigator-initiated arm’s length research grants from Merck, Pfizer, AstraZeneca, and Sanofi. He has been a speaker/consultant for Merck, Emergent BioSolutions, and Shoppers Drug Mart/Loblaw Companies Limited. Rader has been a consultant for Bristol Meyers Squibb, Cytokinetics, Idorsia, Medtronic, and ReCor Medical. Mills and coauthors reported no relevant financial relationships. DiPette declared no relevant financial relationships. He was part of a leadership team that developed WHO guidelines on hypertension.
A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.