Ochsner Health: Digital Medicine Hypertension Program

Louisiana consistently ranks near the bottom in national healthcare, placing 46th, with a significant portion of its population facing health disparities compared to other states. In 2022, approximately 40% of Louisiana’s population had hypertension. Hypertension is a risk factor for a wide variety of diseases, including heart disease, cerebrovascular disease, kidney disease, and internal bleeding (aneurysm), among others.

Ochsner Health (Ochsner), a prominent nonprofit, academic, multi-specialty, integrated healthcare system in the region, decided to tackle this challenge through innovative digital health solutions. Ochsner developed and scaled a digital solution for cardiometabolic chronic disease management, Digital Medicine, which has served over 50,000 enrollees to date across all treated conditions. The Digital Medicine program, which launched in 2015 as a hypertensionfocused solution, offers personalized care for managing high blood pressure remotely using a Bluetooth-enabled blood pressure cuff and a specialized Digital Medicine care team.

By leveraging patient-entered data from the Bluetooth-enabled blood pressure cuff and expert care team support, this solution continues to deliver superior clinical outcomes and provide an outstanding patient experience within an integrated model of care. Since inception, there have been over 34,000 patients who have received hypertension care through Digital Medicine, which is a 300x increase from the pilot enrollment of 104 patients in 2015.

Digital Medicine participants surpass standard blood pressure control standards, achieving an average of 75% control (blood pressure of less than 140/90) after 365 days of enrollment, compared to the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) average of 54.93% in 2023. This success is consistent across all payor types. A subgroup analysis of Medicaid and Medicare patients highlights Digital Medicine’s impact on reducing health equity disparities through a rate reduction of black-white racial disparities in blood pressure control (Medicare patients 7% - 2%; Medicaid patients 16% - 1%).