Can texting new parents to report their blood pressure help address maternal mortality? Some doctors think so

Two Penn Medicine physicians had an unorthodox idea for reducing the number of patients who develop dangerously high blood pressure in the weeks after giving birth: Stop asking them to come into the doctor’s office for blood pressure screenings. Dangerously high blood pressure is a leading cause of maternal death and hospital-readmission after birth, and is often preventable with routine screening. But many new parents are too overwhelmed in the first days of their baby’s life to get themselves to extra medical appointments. Physicians Sindhu Srinivas and Adi Hirshberg decided to instead send patients home with blood pressure cuffs and Read More