Validity of Information for Hypertension, Research Paper Example

When buying hypertension drugs, many offers are made from different sources. Generally, there are two main types of drugs: prescription and non-prescription drugs. Non-prescription drugs can be bought over the counter while for prescription drugs cannot. For prescription drugs, a doctor has to recommend that you buy them by writing down a prescription, which you must produce at the chemist in order for you to qualify to buy the said drugs. This research paper sets out to prove professionals are the best sources of accurate hypertension medication information the research will also indicate that the publisher of the information also has a role to play in making the quality and relevance verification process simple.

Doctors are the professionals who have knowledge on how to treat patients. Some doctors have specialized in one area within the vast field of medicine. These are the best professionals to consult for hypertension medication and advice. In this case, the information provided is very easy to verify for truth since all one needs to look at is the knowledge that has been documented relating on the issue upon which advice has been given.

Hypertension guidelines often recommend treatment targets that are more aggressive and prescription of different types of medications depending on the risk factors and underlying comorbidities (McAlister et al, 1997). Proper medication is therefore very dependent on accurate diagnosis. With accurate diagnosis, treatment patterns can easily be understood by even a non-professional.

Provider practices and data quality are chief determinants of the quality of medication that is provided. Diagnoses relating to hypertension are also worth considering if the medication offered is to be verified accurately. The outpatient clinic file (OPC) holds very important information that can accurately determine whether at any time the wrong medication was offered.

When complications arise in the course of hypertension treatment and relatives of the patient think that quality control standards were poor, the data contained in the OPC can always be consulted in order to see whether there was any negligence on the part of the medical practitioner.

All medical practitioners are required by governments to keep an administration databases from which inspectors from the relevant authorities can keep checking whether the right guidelines were followed during administration of medications (Milchak, 2004). The extent of adherence is measured using physician survey data, medical record review or prescription data. Sometimes, a combination of all the three factors can be used.

Sometimes, physicians are limited in their quest for quality medication by limitations of methodology. Many components of hypertension care need to be evaluated and assessed every now and then. Adherence rests need to be characterized and validated performance measures need to be explicit. Both implicit and explicit reviews need to be incorporated in the assessment process. Process measures also need to be linked to outcomes of blood pressure tests.

Medication for a chronic disease such as hypertension requires strict adherence to professional practice guidelines as well as use all the necessary tools required for the best clinical decisions to be made. Guidance is critical for medication of chronic diseases since it reduces variation in practice, it makes quality of patient care measurable and it acts as a precise guide on appropriateness.

Although patient outcomes improve as a result of shift to evidence-based practices among physicians, some gaps continue to exist between the development of consensus statements and their dissemination so that they may be put into practice. Milchak (2004) says that clinical practice guidelines have never succeeded in consistently changing physician behavior.

The National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI) is a good source of information that one can use to verify whether the right guidelines have been followed in administration of medication. NHLBI is has already published 7 explicit guidelines that should be followed by physicians when they are treating hypertension of scale 8 to 14, where high blood pressure control remains suboptimal. According to Borzecki (2002), out of the 50 million people in the U.S who suffer from hypertension, 40% of them have not received any treatment. Additionally, 66% of all hypertension patients have levels of blood pressure that have not been controlled to the level that is stipulated by guidelines that physicians often use as a reference point.

Many researches findings have shown that the level of adherence to guidelines among physicians has for a long time been very low (Stafford, 1999). For this reason, it becomes easy to relate poor control of blood pressure among patients and lack of adherence to guidelines pertaining to hypertension.

In the treatment of hypertension, level of quality of medications is determined through adherence to guidelines. Physician practice information is cross-checked against the recommended clinical guidelines, such as the one provided by NHLBI. When it comes to physician practice, recommendations of Joint National Committee that oversees Detection, Evaluation and Treatment of High Blood Pressure are a very important reference point.

The quality of care that is offered to hypertension patients is frequently measured using a comparison between the provisions of guidelines and physician practice. Guideline adherence is considered to be a desirable behavior depending to the degree to which patient outcomes are positive.

According to studies that have examined the extent to which quality of care given to hypertension patients records a parallel with recommended JNC guidelines, the three main sources of findings are physical survey data, prescription data and medical record review. The main challenge for these types of researches is that not many studies have been done comparing the relationships between blood pressure control and hypertension. (Borzecki & Berlowitz, 2002).

Conclusion

Presence of nationally recommended guidelines as well as hypertension medication quality measures has not prevented the disturbing situation whereby sub-optimally managed chronic diseases continue to pose a serious health risk.  Published analyses of patterns through which physicians prescribe medications reveal discrepancies as well as deviation from the recommended guidelines on prescription. However, current researches are focusing more on ways through which different guidelines can be integrated in order to come up with a harmonized hypertension medication guideline that all physicians will be adhering to.

References

Milchak, J.  (2004). Measuring Adherence to Practice Guidelines for the Management of Hypertension: An Evaluation of the Literature. Hypertension 44 p. 602-608.

Borzecki, A. & Berlowitz, D. (2002). Academy for Health Services Research and Health Policy. Meeting. Abstract Academic Health Services Res Health Policy Meeting.19: 11.

Stafford, R. et al. (1999). A framework for measuring the quality of medication prescribing using administration data. Abstr Book Assoc Health Serv Res Meet. 16: 378-9.

McAlister, F. et al. (1997). A survey of management practices for isolated systolic hypertension. J Am Geriatr Soc.45 p. 1219–1222.