Medicare Part D patients not taking blood pressure meds correctly
Expert offers specific actions for managed care execs to take
More than one quarter, or about 5 million, of Medicare Part D enrollees taking blood pressure medications are not taking them as prescribed, according to a
High blood pressure is a leading cause of heart disease, stroke, kidney disease and death. Unfortunately, almost one in three U.S. adults (approximately 75 million) has high blood pressure, and nearly half of that group (about 34 million) doesn’t have it under control.
As part of CDC’s ongoing efforts to monitor trends and risk factors contributing to cardiovascular disease, Study author Matthew Ritchey, DPT, PT, OCS, MPH, epidemiologist, CDC’s Division for Heart Disease and Stroke Prevention and colleagues collaborated with colleagues at CMS to look at blood pressure medicine nonadherence among Medicare Part D enrollees aged 65 years and older.
Ritchey
“The findings of this study will help inform future clinical and public health interventions to improve medication adherence and blood pressure control,” says Ritchey.
Ritchey and colleagues studied prescription medicine claims data involving almost 19 million people enrolled in Medicare Part D with either Medicare Advantage or Medicare fee-for-service health insurance coverage during 2014 who were using blood pressure medicine.
“We measured the percentage of days a person filled and had access to their blood pressure medicine,” Ritchey says. “If a person had access less than 80% of the time, we considered them to be non-adherent. We then analyzed differences in nonadherence rates based on factors including geography, race/ethnicity, income status and by the type of antihypertensive medication.”
This was the first study of its kind to identify considerable geographic variation in blood pressure medicine nonadherence at the county level.
Blood pressure medication nonadherence is a problem for all race-ethnicities and geographies, according to the report. However, certain groups were identified that had particularly high rates, according to Ritchey. For example, compared to one in four Medicare Part D enrollees who were Asian or non-Hispanic white not taking their blood pressure medication as directed, one in three enrollees who were black, Hispanic or American Indian/Alaska Natives were not doing so-putting them at higher risk of heart attack, stroke, kidney disease and death.
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