Rheumatology High Blood Pressure Protocol Reduces Disparities, But Delays Remain for External Primary Care.

Background/objective: To address high blood pressure (BP) in rheumatology patients, we previously implemented BP Connect, a brief staff-driven protocol to address high BP. Although timely follow-up and hypertension rates improved for patients with in-system primary care (PC), many receive PC and rheumatology care in separate health systems. In this cohort study, we compared rates of timely PC follow-up for high BP across-system health maintenance organizations (HMOs) before and after BP Connect implementation.