Ardens has created a variety of resources to assist with identifying patients who may have hypertension, and to support their ongoing management once diagnosed. 


Recording Information on the Management of Patients with Hypertension

The Ardens Hypertension clinical template has been designed to standardise consultations, ensuring clinicians are following the latest national guidelines and recording accurate coding of data for the national contract requirements.  

 

To locate the Ardens Hypertension Template, access the relevant patient record. Open a new consultation and select the Run Template option (if not in consultations, click on the Add button on the EMIS ribbon, followed by Data Using Template option).

 

This will open the Template Picker screen. If you have accessed any templates before, these will display to the left of the screen. Search for the template by typing “hypertension” in the search box.

 

 

 

This will return the Hypertension NEW (Ardens) template (alternatively select the Ardens > Chronic disease templates folder to the right of the screen).


All the Ardens Chronic Disease Templates follow the latest NICE guidance and best practice information. This template includes a:

 

  • National Contracts page for capturing QOF requirements.
  • Assessment, Lifestyle and Investigation pages to complete a structured review.
  • CVD Primary Prevention page providing information relating to QRISK.
  • Management page to document advice and management details.
  • Referrals page offering information relating to emergency admission and secondary care referral.
  • Review and Recall page providing the ability to document an annual or interim review has been completed (necessary if using the Ardens LTC Recall System) and to record a diary date for future interim or annual hypertension review – this will link to the Ardens Diary Recall System. 
  • Resources page contains contractual information, and helpful links to information for patients and professionals.
  • Template Info/Learning Points page providing template information and instructions for use, NICE copyright information and links to appraisal toolkits to enable recording of learning.

 

Information relating to contract requirements, will be displayed in red and/or denoted by an asterix (*).

 

Within the National Contracts page,  if the indicator has NOT been achieved for this financial year there will be a red cross and red writing will denote action needed.



If the indicator has been achieved, there will be a green tick and the writing will no longer be red.





Please note - the above only applies to the National Contracts page, all contract indicators on additional pages will be displayed with red writing whether or not they have been completed.


Contract exception reporting codes can be recorded using the drop down option within the Exception reporting section.



For patients presenting with multiple long term conditions, you may wish to use the Ardens Multi-Morbidity Templates.


Additional templates useful for hypertension patients include:


 

Ardens Home BP alert

The Ardens resources includes the following alert to alert practice staff if the patients latest home BP is out of target

 

Hovering over the alert will display the date and value.

 

Ardens Hypertension Searches 

There are various searches that might be useful to support practices with the care of Hypertensive patients:

  • Ardens LTC Recall System - a month of birth recall system, designed to recall a patient for multiple QOF conditions at once.  These searches will ensure your Hypertension patients are attending their annual review. 
  • Additional LTC Recall Searches - the detailed review folder contains additional helpful searches for hypertension patients. 
  • Diary Recall System - allows practice staff to easily manage diary recalls for blood tests, injections, procedures, and follow-ups, including hypertension interim reviews. 
  • Equipment Loan Searches - searches to assist practices with the management and monitoring of equipment loaned to your patients. 
  • Prescribing Monitoring Searches - searches to assist practices with drug monitoring to ensure the correct tests are completed.
  • QOF Misc Searches – searches to identify patients that need a BP this year and those whose BP is out of range for QOF.
  • Chronic Disease Risk Stratification Searches – searches to enable practices to prioritise reviews for high-risk Hypertensive patients. 
  • Ardens Case Finders - contains a suite of searches to support practices to improve data quality and ensure QOF payments are correctly calculated.
  • Ardens Condition Reports - contains a suite of searches which enables practices to monitor activity for last month, be alerted to potential safety issues and areas of best practice that has not been completed for your hypertension patients.

 

Home Blood Pressure Diary Document

Ardens has provided a Home Blood Pressure Diary document template to support patients capturing BP readings at home. To access the Document Templates:

  • Within a consultation, select the Documents > Create letter option.
  • Outside of a consultation, select the Add > Document > Create letter option.

 

This will display the New Patient letter screen.

 

Click on the magnify glass to search for the document template.


 

 

This will display the Find Document Templates screen.

 

Search for the Home Blood Pressure document template using the search box provided, select the relevant document template and click on OK to launch (alternatively double click on the document to open).

 

 

This can be printed for the patient for them to complete at home.

 

 

If you require any further assistance on the process above, please contact Ardens support on: support-emis@ardens.org.uk