[Effectiveness of a quality improvement intervention in blood pressure control in Primary Care].
OBJECTIVE
To evaluate the effectiveness of a quality improvement intervention on professionals sanitary in blood pressure control in hypertensive patients.


METHODS
Quality improvement trials with cuasi-experimental design. Two primary care health centres. One centre was assigned intervention group (7 family doctors and 419 patients) and the other was control group (7 family doctors and 419 patients). The quality improvement intervention consisted of a combined program comprising audit, feedback, training sessions about main hypertension clinical guidelines during 6 months. The main measurement were blood pressure, lipid levels, diabetes, smoking and body index mass, antihypertensive drugs and record treatment adherence and therapeutic plan in march 2002 the baseline measurement and march 2004 the post intervention.


RESULTS
In study group blood pressure systolic and diastolic decreased 8.16/3.71 mmHg and control group increased 1.56/0.13 mmHg, respectively. The intervention effect was a drop of 9.72 mmHg (IC 95%: 7.50-11.94) and diastolic blood pressure in 3.84 mmHg (IC 95%: 2.40-5.28). The rate of hypertensive patients with blood pressure < 140/90 mmHg increased from 37.5% to 68.8% in study group, without changes in control group (p < 0.05). The drugs and combination drugs prescribed increased in both group, while the records of therapeutics plans and adherence increased only in intervention group (p < 0.05).


CONCLUSIONS
The quality improvement intervention was associated to a systolic and diastolic blood pressure reduction and a increase of rate patients with blood pressure controlled.
Gómez-Marcos
M A
MA
Médico de Familia, Unidad de Investigación La Alamedilla, Salamanca, España. magomez@usal.es
García-Ortiz
L
L
González-Elena
L J
LJ
Ramos-Delgado
E
E
González-García
A M
AM
Parra-Sánchez
J
J
D000368:Aged; D000959:Antihypertensive Agents / Q000627:therapeutic use*; D001795:Blood Pressure Determination; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D006973:Hypertension / Q000188:drug therapy* / Q000453:epidemiology; D008297:Male; D010349:Patient Compliance; D011320:Primary Health Care; D011785:Quality Assurance, Health Care; D013030:Spain / Q000453:epidemiology; D016896:Treatment Outcome
D000959:Antihypertensive Agents