ABPM-Service-Support
Ambulatory Blood Pressure Measurement (ABPM) – Service Support
An ABPM service needs to be provided promptly when it is indicated in the Care Pathway.
The content below shares helpful ideas & tips to improve the efficiency of your services.
Try it Yourself – all pharmacists and technicians involved in service provision should personally try using the ABPM instrument, even if just during working hours in the pharmacy. Then download the data and create a Summary Report, even if it just contains half a dozen recordings. The experience will bring to life all of the practical issues which the User Manual for the device simply cannot convey.
ABPM Appointments – This Appointment Slip includes a useful summary of issues that patients should be aware of in advance of having an ABPM instrument fitted, such as not getting it wet!
Technicians & Teamworking – a qualified pharmacy technician, suitably trained as given in the SLA, can lead on the ABPM monitoring service. See the Optimising Role of Technicians link on the BP Checks main page. Ideally the pharmacist and technician should watch the short video together, pausing and discussing matters as it plays.
Reminder Stickers for Prescriptions –staff can observe if a patient might qualify for a blood pressure case-finding intervention during the prescription labelling process. (age?/cardiovascular medicines? etc) Why not affix a sticker to the script, like an NMS reminder, prompting the offer of a BP check where appropriate.
Recording Offers of Checks – Use PMR Notes functionality to record when you ask a patient if they would like a BP check. Eg “10/11/23 – BP check refused, nurse checked it in last 3 months” . This will help to avoid un-necessary repeat offers of checks. We don’t want to pester patients with the same offer every time they present.
Patient Records (Housekeeping) – Use the Create New Drug function to create four new ‘drugs’ namely “Blood Pressure Clinic (pharmacy)”, “Blood Pressure ABPM (pharmacy)”, “Blood Pressure Clinic (GP referral)”, and “Blood Pressure ABPM (GP referral)” One of these can be selected when you type bloo.. to create a ‘dispensing’ record as though the service were a dispensed item. Then key in the actual BP result on the next line like free-typing dose directions as a reminder. [this idea will also support the searching and reporting of service volumes provided!]
Post Payment Validation (PPV) checks – prepare for the possibility of an NHS England PPV check by saving pdf copies of the Basic Provision Record generated by PharmOutcomes for each BP service provided. Create a secure Blood Pressure Checks folder, in the cloud or wherever you keep sensitive records, with 4 sub-folders using the same 4 names as above. You will need to do this anyway to save pdf copies of your ABPM Summary Reports before uploading them to PharmOutcomes, so this house-keeping tip will help you keep track of your ABPM records. Whereas this tip also suggests you create 2 more folders for your clinic checks in the same safe place, and using them to store pdfs of the Basic Provision Records for the clinic checks.