Lexington Family Practice physician honored for hypertension effort

Blake Amick recently started taking medication to control his blood pressure, more than 30 years after the problem first surfaced.

Advise from his physician, Dr. Henry Martin, helped Amick keep hypertension at bay for three decades with exercise and a healthy diet. As he neared 60, Amick needed more help and finally relented to taking medication. Martin is helping guide him into the next stage.

Amick is an ideal example of why Martin recently was honored by the Million Hearts initiative.

Only about half of the 70 million American adults with high blood pressure have the condition under control, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Martin was among 30 physicians honored because more than 70 percent of their patients with hypertension have the condition under control.

“It’s not rocket science,” Martin said of the clinical success. “It’s just doing basic things over and over and over again.”

Nearly one out of three adults in the United States has high blood pressure, which is listed as a contributing factor in about 360,000 deaths in the country each year, according to the CDC. High blood pressure is a major indicator of heart attack, stroke and chronic heart failure.

But some physicians do a better job than others of properly diagnosing the condition and communicating with patients about the dangers they face and the options for keeping the condition under control.

Two of the 30 physicians honored nationally were in the Midlands – Martin at Lexington Family Practice and Dr. Reginald Parker at Northlake Family Medical Practice.

Martin said he willingly jumped aboard a state hypertension initiative that would gather data on how individual practices were performing. He wasn’t aiming for an award but hoping to contribute data to the effort to improve health care practices.

“One of the things that I think made a big difference was stressing to our nurses that every milliliter matters,” Martin said. “You have to get accurate blood pressure readings.”

Martin recently moved from the Lexington Family Practice office on Powell Drive in Lexington to the new office at Otarre Pointe in Cayce. Throughout the Lexington Family Practice system, however, similar procedures are followed. For instance, they use a blood pressure machine that takes six readings, throws out the first and averages the last five. That leads to more accurate measurements.

They also avoid what Martin called “therapeutic inertia.” All too often, he suspects, physicians let patients get away with blaming a first high blood pressure reading on the stress of that particular day. By the time the patient returns in six months or a year, the second high readings might be too late for an easy fix.

Other than accurate measurements, the real key is clear two-way communications, Martin said. He tries to make sure his patients understand why they are taking medications, and that the drugs don’t work if they don’t follow the instructions.

At the same time, Martin said he listens to the patients to understand their situations. Prescribing medications they can’t afford, for instance, does no good. If the condition is caught early enough, he aims patients to a low-salt diet and exercise instead of medication.

That was his advise to Amick nearly 30 years ago.

“When I was 28, I put on weight and went to see Dr. Martin,” Amick said. “He told me my blood pressure was high and I either needed to go on medication or change my lifestyle. I elected to change my lifestyle.”

It worked. Martin hardly had to bring up the subject at subsequent office visits. Then recently, Amick noticed problems during his exercise regimen. Diet and exercise no longer are enough to hold off high blood pressure, and Martin now has put him on medication to help control it.

But the key is, after all these years, it’s still under control.

“I attribute it to Dr. Martin laying out the groundwork that first time,” Amick said.

This story was originally published April 20, 2015 at 2:10 PM with the headline "Lexington Family Practice physician honored for hypertension effort."