New data out of Ontario, Canada suggests that blood pressure home monitoring without any kind of feedback loop about the readings, can lead to an unnecessary strain on the healthcare system. In the study, published last week in the Annals of Emergency Medicine, an analysis of more than 200,000 emergency room visits across 180 sites showed a 64 percent increase in emergency room visits for hypertension from 2002 to 2012 — despite a 28 percent decrease in hospitalizations for hypertension over that same time frame.
