Published Online
on December 12, 2005

A more recent version of this article appeared on January 1, 2006

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Submitted on August 11, 2005
Revised on August 28, 2005

The Impact of the Canadian Hypertension Education Program on Antihypertensive Prescribing Trends

Norman R.C. Campbell; Karen Tu; Rollin Brant; Minh Duong-Hua; Finlay A. McAlister;^*; for the Canadian Hypertension Education Program Outcomes Research Task Force

From the Departments of Medicine and Pharmacology and Therapeutics (N.C.), University of Calgary, Calgary; Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences (K.T., M.D.), Toronto; University Health Network-Toronto Western Hospital Family Medicine Centre (K.T.), University of Toronto, Toronto; Department of Family and Community Medicine-Family Healthcare Research Unit (K.T.), University of Toronto; Department of Statistics and Centre for Community Child Health Research (R.B.), Child and Family Research Institute, Vancouver; Division of General Internal Medicine (F.M.), University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada.

^* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: Finlay.McAlister{at}ualberta.ca.

Abstract--Although previous studies have shown that hypertension management has improved in Canada during the past decade, this study was designed to determine whether these changes were temporally related to initiation of the Canadian Hypertension Education Program in 1999. Antihypertensive prescription rates in Ontario were compared using time series analyses before and after 1999 in 2 Ontario cohorts: all hypertensives prescribed therapy (using the Intercontinental Medical Statistics CompuScript Database) and all elderly hypertensives without diabetes prescribed therapy (using linked administrative databases including the Ontario Drug Benefit Database). Between January 1998 and December 2003, 280 million prescriptions for antihypertensive agents were filled in Ontario, and total antihypertensive prescriptions increased by 58% annually; time series analyses confirmed that the prescribing rates for total antihypertensives, thiazide diuretics, -blockers, and calcium channel blockers increased significantly after 1999, even after adjustment for the temporal trends in the pre-1999 data. In the 166 018 nondiabetic individuals over age 65 who were newly treated for hypertension in Ontario between July 1994 and March 2002, changes in prescription rates for total antihypertensive drugs, angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors, blockers, and calcium channel blockers occurred in directions that were consistent with guideline recommendations and were statistically significantly related to the initiation of the Canadian Hypertension Education Program. The substantial changes in prescription rates for guideline-recommended antihypertensive drug classes in elderly Ontarians without diabetes and the general Ontario population seen in the past decade are temporally related to the initiation of the Canadian Hypertension Education Program.

Key words: hypertension • drug therapy • prospective studies

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