Big blood pressure improvements seen with no copays, easier-to-use pills

CHICAGO — New research suggests giving patients easier-to-take medicine and no-copay medical visits can help drive down high blood pressure, a major contributor to poor health and untimely deaths nationwide. Those efforts were part of a big health care provider's eight-year program, involving more than 300,000 patients with high blood pressure. At the beginning, less than half had brought their blood pressure under control. That increased to a remarkable 80 percent, well above the national average, the researchers said. The research involved Kaiser Permanente in Northern California, a network of 21 hospitals and 73 doctors' offices, which makes coordinating treatment easier than in independent physicians' offices.