Development and feasibility of a community pharmacy-driven 24-hour ambulatory blood pressure monitoring service

Although 24-hour ambulatory blood pressure monitoring (ABPM) is recommended by practice guidelines, access to ABPM is poor in the United States. Other countries have increased ABPM access by making it available in community pharmacies. It is not known if a similar approach is feasible in the United States.

The objective of this study was to develop and evaluate the feasibility of a community pharmacy-driven ABPM service in the United States.

Two independent community pharmacies.

The ABPM service was developed through a collaboration between an academic partner and the clinical service leads of each pharmacy. Eligible patients were those referred by their provider or self-referred for white coat, masked, or sustained hypertension (HTN), symptoms of hypotension, or requiring confirmation of an initial diagnosis of HTN. The service was appointment-based, and the pharmacist sent the ABPM results and interpretation to the referring provider via facsimile.

This is the first description of a community pharmacy-driven ABPM service in the United States.

Descriptive statistics were used to summarize the data for the baseline demographics, ABPM findings, and a 9-question patient satisfaction survey.

A total of 52 patients with a mean (SD) age of 56.6 (16.1) years, 50% women, 75% white, and 71.2% with a prior diagnosis of HTN were enrolled. Forty-six patients (88.5%) had successful ABPM readings with the most common blood pressure phenotypes being nocturnal HTN (91.3%), nondipper (52.1%), sustained HTN (41.3%), normotensive (23.9%), and white coat HTN (19.6%). Overall, 88% of the patients strongly agreed or agreed that they were very satisfied with their experience using the ABPM service.

A community pharmacy-driven ABPM service is feasible in the United States and may be one approach to improve access to ABPM.