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Vol. 54, No. 2, February 2008, pp.230 - 231 Copyright © 2008 by The College of Family Physicians of Canada
Recording blood pressure readings in elderly patients chartsWhat patient and physician characteristics make it more likely?Joel Broomfield, MD MSc and Nicola Schieda, MDResidents in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Ottawa in Ontario
Shannon M. Sullivan, MSc
Larry W. Chambers, PhD FACE FFPH(UK)
Janusz Kaczorowski, PhD
Tina Karwalajtys, MA
Correspondence to: Dr Larry W. Chambers, Elisabeth Bruyère Research Institute, 43 Bruyère St, Ottawa, ON K1N 5C8; telephone 613 562-6045; fax 613 562-4266; e-maillchamber{at}scohs.on.ca High blood pressure (BP) is a well established and modifiable risk factor for cardiovascular disease.1 Deaths from ischemic heart disease and stroke increase as BP levels increase.2 Canadian Hypertension Education Program guidelines recommend using lifestyle and pharmacologic therapies to reduce BP to target values,3 as clinically significant reductions in BP can be achieved through a combination of these therapies.4 The cardiovascular health of Canadas aging population is clearly a public health issue.5 High BP affects about 22% of all Canadians6 and more than 50% of people 60 years old and older.2,6,7 The residual lifetime risk of developing hypertension for people 55 and older is 90%.8 In a national study, 42% of adults with high BP were unaware of their high BP, 19% were aware but were not receiving medical treatment, and 23% were receiving treatment but their BP was inadequately controlled. Hence, only 16% of those with high BP had it treated and controlled.7,9 The cornerstone of appropriate diagnosis and treatment of BP is accurate BP measurement. Current guidelines recommend that family physicians take at least 2 BP readings at each patient visit and note the averaged result, both verbally to patients and in writing in patients charts.2,3,10,11 In this study, we examined whether any physician and patient characteristics were associated with family physicians recording BP measurements in the medical charts of their elderly patients. We wanted to identify which patients were at highest risk of not having their BP assessed and recorded regularly.
Selection of practices Lists of family physicians in the Ottawa (n = 592) and Hamilton (n = 335) regions of Ontario were generated, and 242 family physicians (200 from Ottawa and 42 from Hamilton) were randomly selected and invited to come for an assessment of their eligibility for participation in the Community Hypertension Assessment Trial (CHAT).12 The CHAT was a paired cluster randomized controlled trial evaluating the effectiveness of an invitational cardiovascular health promotion program held in local pharmacies and staffed by specially trained peer health educators. The program emphasized BP control and management. Of the physicians selected for assessment, 25% (60/242) met the initial eligibility criteria. Eligible physicians were those who had non-academic, full-time, regular family practices in terms of patient population and case mix and who were able to generate a roster of regular patients aged 65 and older. Only 1 physician per group practice was eligible to participate in the study. In total, 47% (28/60) of eligible family physicians agreed to participate. The primary reasons for not participating were being too busy and having no interest in the project.
Selection of patients
Data collection and quality assurance Patients were considered to be diagnosed with hypertension if any of the following notations was found in their health records: diagnosis of "hypertension," or "high blood pressure," or "high BP" in the context of a diagnosis rather than based on 1 elevated reading or ambiguous notations such as "query," "probable" or "probably," and "monitor." Patients demographic characteristics, cardiovascular risk factors, current antihypertensive medication profiles, number of visits to family physicians during the 12-month review period, and number of BP recordings were obtained from the health records. If no BP was recorded during the 12-month review period, the date of last BP measurement was noted as far back as 24 months before the date of the review. All participating physicians completed a baseline questionnaire on their sociodemographic and practice characteristics. The study was reviewed and approved by the research ethics boards of the SCO Health Service and Hamilton Health Sciences and the Faculty of Health Sciences at McMaster University in Hamilton.
Data analysis The associations between patient characteristics (age, sex, smoking status, family history of cardiovascular disease, diagnosis of hypertension or taking antihypertensive medication, diabetes, heart disease including peripheral vascular disease and aortic aneurysm, stroke or transient ischemic attack, retinopathy, nephropathy, number of visits to a family physician during the past 12 months) and BP recording were examined using univariate logistic regression analysis. To avoid multicolinearity, a composite variable including patients with diagnosed hypertension or patients taking antihypertensive medications was created. A composite variable including heart disease, peripheral vascular disease, and aortic aneurysm was also constructed. Patient and physician characteristics significant at P < .1 in univariate logistic regression analysis were retained for a full multivariate logistic regression model to examine their association with BP recording. A reduced multivariate model included only those variables that were statistically significant at P < .05 in the full multivariate model. Odds ratios (OR), 95% confidence intervals (CI), and 2-tailed P values were calculated for each variable in the univariate and multivariate logistic regression models. Analyses were conducted using SAS 9.1.3. All univariate and multivariate analyses accounted for clustering of patients within practices using the PROC GENMOD program.
Blood pressure was recorded in 84% (1298/1540) of the health records reviewed. Mean age of patients was 74.3 years, and 43% (658/1540) were male. About 50% of patients (776/1540) had been diagnosed with hypertension, and 86% of these (669/776) were taking at least 1 antihypertensive medication. Associated health conditions were also recorded: 25% (386/1540) of patients had heart disease, 17% (258/1540) had diabetes, and 7% (101/1540) had experienced strokes or transient ischemic attacks. Mean age of physicians was 52.3 years, and their mean number of years since graduation from medical school was 25.8. About 54% of physicians were practising under fee-for-service and 46% under capitation payment schemes (29% in primary care networks and 18% in health service organizations). In univariate analyses, BP recording was less likely among physicians working in group practices sharing patient rosters than among physicians in solo practice (P = .007), but there was no difference between group practices sharing office space and solo practices (P = .78) (Table 1). Years since graduation from medical school was also significant at P = .05 (Table 1); physicians with fewer than 25 years since graduation were more likely to record BP.
The 84% of patients (1298/1540) who had at least 1 BP recording noted had visited their family physicians 1 to 37 times (mean 6.3, standard deviation 4.3) during the 12-month review period. Among the 16% of patients (241/1540) with no BP recorded during the review period, 47% (114/241) had had no BP measurement recorded during the 24 months before the chart review either. Patients diagnosed with hypertension or taking antihypertensive medications (93%, 908/975) were more likely to have had their BP recorded during the 12-month period than patients not diagnosed with hypertension or not taking antihypertensive medications (69%, 386/558) (Table 2). Patients diagnosed with diabetes (92%, 238/258) were more likely than non-diabetic patients (83%, 1056/1276) to have had their BP recorded, as were patients diagnosed with heart disease (90%, 386/428) compared with those without heart disease (82%, 905/1104). Patients with a history of stroke or transient ischemic attack were somewhat more likely to have had their BP recorded (91%, 92/101) than those who had not (84%, 1200/1432). The likelihood of any patient having a BP measurement recorded by a family physician increased with the number of office visits. Only 5% of patients (35/650) who visited their physicians more than 5 times had had no BP recorded. Current smokers were less likely to have had their BP recorded during the 12-month period than those who were not currently smoking (23%, 28/123 vs 13%, 137/1076). For all other recorded patient characteristics, age, sex, family history of cardiovascular disease, retinopathy, and nephropathy, there were no significant differences in BP recording.
In the reduced multivariate model (Table 3), the odds of having had BP recorded increased significantly if a patient had made 2 to 5 visits to a physician during the 12-month review period compared with 1 visit (OR 5.1, 95% CI 3.4 to 7.7) or more than 5 visits compared with 1 visit (OR 13.5, 95% CI 8.0 to 22.8). Being diagnosed with hypertension or taking antihypertensive medication increased the likelihood of having had BP recorded (OR 4.6, 95% CI 3.3 to 6.3). The only physician characteristic significantly associated with BP recording was having graduated from medical school 24 or fewer years ago compared with more than 24 years ago (OR 0.6, 95% CI 0.4 to 1.0).
A sensitivity analysis comparing the full multivariate model with a model that also included patients age and sex did not substantially change estimates. A sensitivity analysis comparing the full multivariate model (n = 1494) with a model that excluded smoking status (n = 1161) was also conducted owing to the large amount of missing data on smoking status (22%). The model excluding smoking status did not substantially change estimates of the effects of other variables.
The results of this study should be generalizable to other non-academic, urban practices in Ontario. Mean age of family physicians in Ontario is 47.7 years13 compared with 53.2 years in this study. About 33% of family physicians in Ontario are female14 compared with 24% in this study. Also, 50% of patients in this study were hypertensive, which is comparable to what has been reported in other studies of Canadian patients.7 About 56% of patients were taking antihypertensive medications, which is similar to the proportion (46%) found in a family practice study in the United Kingdom.15
Factors that influence BP recording A randomized controlled trial examining referral for mammography found that solo practitioners were less likely than those working in group practices to refer.18 This contrasts with our results, which showed that BP recording was less frequent among physicians in group practices sharing patient rosters. Patients taking antihypertensive medications or with diagnosed hypertension were more likely to have their BP recorded, which might mean that BP control is better among already diagnosed patients. The results of this study also show that fewer office visits during a 12-month period decreased the likelihood of BP being recorded. These results are similar to those of a survey of 1400 elderly patients in family practices in Canada, where multiple visits increased the likelihood of BP being recorded.19 The average of 5.9 patient visits made during the review period was similar to that found in other studies in Canada that show the average number of visits to family physicians offices in 1 year varies from 4.2 to 5.4 among those 65 years old and older.19,20 In a study in the United Kingdom, 80% of patients were found to have at least 1 BP measurement recorded during a 5-year period.15 This study also found that almost 84% of seniors who visited their family physicians at least once in a 12-month period had had their BP recorded. Blood pressure was not recorded for about 16% of elderly patients, a population at high risk of developing hypertension or having uncontrolled BP. Family physicians not measuring and recording elderly patients BP levels are missing opportunities to identify elevated BP, begin treatment, and reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease in these patients.
Interventions Another intervention is use of a team-oriented approach to measuring BP and managing hypertensive patients. A randomized controlled trial of 34 family physicians in Ontario assessed use of medical assistants for screening patients for high BP.24 This study concluded that the number of BP measurements increased in practices using a team approach. Drawbacks to this protocol include the cost of training assistants and the organizational challenges of having more staff. Some initiatives are under way to establish a more organized approach to chronic disease prevention and management in Canada. For example, primary care reform initiatives, such as the introduction of multidisciplinary teams of physicians, pharmacists, and other health care professionals currently under way in several provinces in Canada, show great promise over traditional approaches to chronic disease management. Another promising strategy is having community-wide BP programs. The Calgary firefighter program25 and the Cardiovascular Health Awareness Program12 are examples of such programs that might improve BP management by providing family physicians and their patients with additional, accurate BP recordings taken outside physicians offices. Finally, initiatives to encourage self-management of hypertension are also important in improving BP control. Greater patient involvement in BP control should be fostered; patients should be encouraged to use websites to record and track BP and develop personal skills to support self-assessment practices. Primary care organizations should do more to promote self-monitoring of BP. Studies on using a combination of these interventions, placing emphasis on their ability to improve BP control and management while maintaining cost effectiveness, are needed.
Conclusion
We thank Keith ORourke and Heather Hall for their contributions to this project. This research was funded in part by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) in Ottawa, Ont, project number 57902; through a contract with the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care; and by the CIHR Team for Individualizing Pharmacotherapy in Primary Care for Seniors. During the preparation of this paper, Dr Broomfield and Dr Schieda each received a Medical Student Bursary from the University of Ottawa and the CIHR
* Full text is available in English at www.cfp.ca. Dr Chambers and Dr Kaczorowski were responsible for conception and design of this study. Ms Karwalajtys was responsible for acquisition of data. Ms Sullivan, Dr Broomfield, and Dr Schieda were responsible for analysis and interpretation of data. All the authors participated in drafting and revising the manuscript and gave final approval to the text submitted for publication. None declared This article has been peer reviewed.
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