PDSA & Quality Improvement
FQHC PDSA Example: Improving Hypertension Control
A worked structure for a hypertension control improvement cycle, from aim statement through the documented decision.
By Jessica R. Smith, BSN · Updated · 8 min read
An illustrative cycle, not a benchmark
The structure below is an example of how a hypertension control cycle can be written. The numbers a health center uses should be its own; nothing here is a performance claim or a target set by any external body.
Plan: the aim and the test
Name the population, the measure, the change being tested, and who is running it. A common shape: adult patients with a hypertension diagnosis seen in the last period, tested against a repeat-BP workflow at rooming.
- Measure: hypertension control rate as your health center defines it for reporting
- Owner: one named clinical or nursing lead
- Test period: a defined number of weeks at one site or one pod
- Decision rule: written before the test begins
Do: run it small and record what actually happened
Record deviations as they occur. The reasons a workflow did not happen as designed are usually the most useful part of the cycle.
Study and Act: the part that gets skipped
Compare performance to the periods before the test, note confounders honestly, then write the adopt, adapt, or abandon decision with a date and an owner.
If the measure itself looks unreliable, the denominator troubleshooting sequence is usually the right detour before drawing conclusions.
Run a cycle in MeasureWise
Start from a hypertension template and keep the evidence trail as you go.
Run a cycle in MeasureWise