Commentary

VA, Kaiser lauded for hypertension control

Publish date: November 30, 2017
By
Mitchel L. Zoler, PhD

 

At a time when the Department of Veterans Affairs is criticized for the care it delivers, and when some also see it threatened by privatization, it was refreshing to hear the VA praised for the quality of its hypertension care, a model for success in a new era of reduced blood pressure treatment targets and revised hypertension guidelines that classify millions more Americans as having hypertension.

“In systems of care, like the VA and Kaiser Permanente Northern California, we are doing much better with hypertension control, reaching control rates greater than 90%,” Paul Whelton, MD, said in November during a talk at the American Heart Association scientific sessions in Anaheim, Calif. In a separate report at the same meeting, Dr. Whelton, a professor of public health at Tulane University in New Orleans, first presented the new hypertension diagnosis and management guidelines, produced by the American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association panel that he chaired (J Am Coll Cardiol. 2017 Nov 13. doi: 10.1016/j.jacc.2017.11.006).

Dr. Paul Whelton is a professor of public health at Tulane University in New Orleans. Mitchel L. Zoler/Frontline Medical News

Dr. Paul Whelton

Earlier, I asked Dr. Whelton specifically about the prospects for successful hypertension control as the number of targeted patients grows. He acknowledged that, overall, about half of all U.S. patients with hypertension currently have their blood pressure at goal, even when measured against the old target of less than 140/90 mm Hg rather than against the new target of less than 130/80 mm Hg. He also noted that even this very modest level of control allowed the United States, along with Canada, to “lead the world in blood pressure control.”

He again stressed that the VA and Kaiser are doing “remarkably well” when it came to controlling hypertension in the vast majority of their patients.

That assessment seems especially appropriate for Kaiser Permanente Northern California, Oakland, Calif. Data from an audit of Kaiser’s hypertension registry showed that during 2000-2013 the percentage of patients with hypertension at their goal blood pressure rose from 44% in 2000 to 90% in 2013 (J Clin Hypertension. 2016 April;18[4]:260-1). The two Kaiser researchers who reported these findings attributed the rise in control rates to a hypertension treatment program that Kaiser Permanente Northern California put into practice starting in 2000.

Current success in the VA Health System is harder to pin down and put in the Kaiser ballpark. The most up-to-date audit I could find was a 2012 report from a team of VA researchers who reviewed control rates of more than half a million hypertensive veterans at 15 VA medical centers during 2000-2010. They found that, during that 11-year period, the percentage of hypertensive patients with their blood pressure controlled to their target level had risen from 46% in 2000 to 76% in 2010 (Circulation. 2012 May 22;125[20]:2462-68).

While this 76% rate of control in 2010 is short of the 90% rate in Kaiser in 2013, it’s still not shabby. To put the 76% control rate in perspective, consider data reported at the AHA meeting from TargetBP, a national program begun in late 2015 to aid all U.S. health care programs in improving their hypertension control rates: This data showed that, among 310 participating programs that filed 2016 control-rate data with TargetBP, the average control rate was 66%. Specifically, of those 310 reporting programs, 191 (62%) had control rates that exceeded 70%, with an average control rate among these more successful programs of 76%.

Dr. Donald M. Lloyd-Jones is a professor and chairman of preventive medicine at Northwestern University in Chicago.

Dr. Donald M. Lloyd-Jones

But this 76% average was for 2016 versus the 76% success rate among VA patients during 2010. Given the trajectory of improving control among VA patients during 2000-2010, when the rate rose from 46% to 76%, it seems reasonable to suspect that this steady improvement continued such that by 2016 the control rate at these 15 centers may well have been higher than the 76% tallied in 2010.

As-yet-unpublished data collected by the VA show that other centers in the system beyond those 15 included in the study discussed above have also recently reached a similar control level of about 75%, said Vasilios Papademetriou, MD, a professor of medicine at Georgetown University and the director of the Interventional Hypertension and Vascular Medicine Program at the VA Medical Center in Washington. Plus, certain VA centers are now up to an 85% control rate, he added in an interview. “Blood pressure control rates have been exceptionally good in the VA medical system,” he declared. Dr. Papademetriou attributed the rising control rates to a concerted hypertension program the VA instituted starting in the early 2000s.

“The VA has had some physicians who have championed this issue, and they have built computer-based systems to identify patients with uncontrolled hypertension, and then they plug these patients into their care algorithms,” commented Donald M. Lloyd-Jones, MD, a professor and chairman of preventive medicine at Northwestern University in Chicago. “Often, when there are champions, things change,” he noted.

William C. Cushman, MD, a hypertension specialist who is chief of preventive medicine for the VA Medical Center in Memphis and professor of preventive medicine at the University of Tennessee, also in Memphis, highlighted several steps the VA took that have helped fuel the program’s success in controlling blood pressure.

Dr. William C. Cushman is a hypertension specialist who is chief of preventive medicine for the VA Medical Center in Memphis and professor of preventive medicine at the University of Tennessee, also in Memphis.

Dr. William C. Cushman

“We began using electronic medical records earlier than most systems, and the medical staff receives feedback on which patients are not at their blood pressure goal,” he said in an interview. Also, patients receive their antihypertensive medications at little or no out-of-pocket cost, and once a patient is in the VA system, they receive long-term, comprehensive care.

Dr. Cushman couldn’t resist adding that this successful approach to hypertension management is now threatened by potential changes to the VA system that could take some patients out of the existing program and move them to privatized medical care. “If that happens, patients will not get the same comprehensive care” that until now has produced such high rates of hypertension control, he warned.

On Twitter @mitchelzoler

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