The more recent study went further, removing physicians almost entirely from the process. The control group consisted of barbers who encouraged lifestyle modification or referred customers with high blood pressure to physicians. In the intervention group, barbers screened patients, then handed them off to pharmacists who met with customers in the barbershops. They treated patients with medications and lifestyle changes according to set protocols, then updated physicians on what they had done.
The results were impressive. Six months into the trial, systolic blood pressure (the higher of the two blood pressure measures) in the control group had dropped about 9 mm Hg (millimeters of mercury) to 145.4, which is still high.
In the intervention group, though, blood pressure had dropped 27 mm Hg to 125.8, which is close to “normal.” If we define the goal of blood pressure management to be less than 130/80, more than 63 percent of the intervention group achieved it, compared with less than 12 percent of the control group.
It gets better. The rate of cohort retention — measuring how many of the patients remained plugged into the study and care throughout the entire process — was 95 percent.
The barbershop customers were part of a population that is traditionally hard to reach. More than half of participants lived in households earning less than $50,000 a year, and more than 40 percent in households earning less than $25,000. On average, they were overweight or obese, about a third smoked, and more than a fifth had diabetes. Yet the improvement in blood pressure was more than three times that of the average of previous pharmacist-based interventions seeking to improve blood pressure, and many of those had focused on populations easier to reach.
Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/21/upshot/what-barbershops-can-teach-about-delivering-health-care.html