A pilot study to assess blood-brain barrier permeability in long COVID.

The etiology of brain fog associated with long COVID is not clear. Based on some preliminary work, disruption of the blood-brain barrier has been hypothesized, but has not been tested in patients with long COVID. In this case-control pilot study, we evaluated blood-brain barrier permeability in patients with long COVID and subjective memory loss or brain fog.

Design of a pragmatic randomized implementation effectiveness trial testing a health system wide hypertension program for older adults.

Hypertension control remains poor. Multiple barriers at the level of patients, providers, and health systems interfere with implementation of hypertension guidelines and effective lowering of BP. Some strategies such as self-measured blood pressure (SMBP) and remote management by pharmacists are safe and effectively lower BP but have not been effectively implemented.

Assessing the Immunization Information System and electronic health record interface accuracy for COVID-19 vaccinations.

Objective: Our objective is to assess the accuracy of the COVID-19 vaccination status within the electronic health record (EHR) for a panel of patients in a primary care practice when manual queries of the state immunization databases are required to access outside immunization records.

Materials And Methods: This study evaluated COVID-19 vaccination status of adult primary care patients within a university-based health system EHR by manually querying the Kansas and Missouri Immunization Information Systems.

Results: A manual query of the local Immunization Information Systems for 4114 adult patients with "unknown" vaccination status showed 44% of the patients were previously vaccinated.

ISBARR Huddle: First-Year Medical Students Managing Critical Hypoglycemia as an Interprofessional Team.

Introduction: Recognizing a patient requiring urgent or emergent care and initiating evaluation and management must include elements that support teams working and thinking together. Although team communication strategies exist, a standardized approach for communicating about patients with urgent or emergent conditions is lacking. This simulation was designed to provide first-semester medical students with the opportunity to deliberately practice the foundational teamwork skills required to think as a team while caring for a patient with critical hypoglycemia.

Implementing a home-based virtual hypertension programme-a pilot feasibility study.

Introduction: Implementing a health system-based hypertension programme may lower blood pressure (BP).

Methods: We performed a randomized, controlled pilot study to assess feasibility, acceptability, and safety of a home-based virtual hypertension programme integrating evidence-based strategies to overcome current barriers to BP control. Trained clinical pharmacists staffed the virtual collaborative care clinic (vCCC) to remotely manage hypertension using a BP dashboard and phone "visits" to monitor BP, adherence, side effects of medications, and prescribe anti-hypertensives.

Improving patient portal enrolment in an academic resident continuity clinic: quality improvement made simple.

Electronic health record patient portal usage has been associated with improvement in chronic disease parameters, patient functional status and patient satisfaction. Our institution's patient portal is a secure, online health management tool that connects patients to portions of their electronic health record. Our quality improvement project aimed to increase patient portal enrolment significantly in our Internal Medicine resident patient panels.