Economic analysis of Heart and Stroke Foundation of Ontario's Hypertension Management Initiative

Abstract

Claire de Oliveira,1,2 Harindra C Wijeysundera,2,3 Sheldon W Tobe,4 Margaret Moy Lum-Kwong,5 Shirley Von Sychowski,5 Xuesong Wang,6 Jack V Tu,6 Murray D Krahn2,71University Health Network, Toronto, ON, Canada; 2Toronto Health Economics and Technology Assessment Collaborative, Toronto, ON, Canada; 3Schulich Heart Centre, Division of Cardiology, Department of Medicine, Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada; 4Division of Nephrology, Department of Medicine, Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada; 5Heart and Stroke Foundation of Ontario, Toronto, ON, Canada; 6Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences, Toronto, ON, Canada; 7Department of Medicine and Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, CanadaObjectives: Hypertension is suboptimally treated in primary care settings. We evaluated the cost-effectiveness of the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Ontario's Hypertension Management Initiative (HMI), an interdisciplinary, evidence-informed chronic disease management model for primary care that focuses on improving blood pressure management and control by primary care providers and patients according to clinical best practice guidelines.Methods: The perspective of our analysis was that of the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care with a lifetime horizon and 5% annual discount rate. Using data from a prospective cohort study from the HMI, we created two matched groups: pre-HMI (standard care), and post-HMI (n = 1720). For each patient, we estimated the 10-year risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) using the Framingham risk equation and life expectancy from life tables. Long-term health care costs incurred with physician visits, acute and chronic care hospitalizations, emergency department visits, same-day surgeries, and medication use were determined through linkage to administrative databases, using a bottom-up approach.Results: The HMI intervention was associated with significant reductions in systolic blood pressure (126 mmHg vs 134 mmHg with standard care; P-value < 0.001). These improvements were associated with a reduction in the 10-year risk of CVD (9.5% risk vs 10.7% in standard care; P-value < 0.001) and a statistically significant improvement in discounted life expectancy (9.536 years vs 9.516 in standard care; P-value < 0.001). The HMI cohort had a discounted mean lifetime cost of $22,884 CAD vs $22,786 CAD for standard care, with an incremental cost-effectiveness ratio of $4939 CAD per life-year gained.Conclusion: We found that the HMI is a cost-effective means of providing evidence-informed, chronic disease management in primary care to patients with hypertension.Keywords: hypertension, economic evaluation, cardiovascular disease