[Description of costs and effectiveness of a hypertension control program in primary care]. / Descripción de los costes y la efectividad de un programa de control de hipertensos en atención primaria.

OBJECTIVE: To find the control degree of a population of hypertension patients. To evaluate the cost effectiveness of health services. SETTING: EAP Salvador Pau. Valencia (Spain). PATIENTS: 200 patients diagnosed of hypertension included in the health center file. MEASUREMENTS AND RESULTS: Items studied were age, sex, diagnosis and program inclusion year, number of visits, other explorations and its cost, TAS and TAD, drugs and its cost, personnel cost. We established different well control levels and we obtained the cost of each of them. Twenty six point five per cent of patients had TA values below 140/90 mmHg; Sixty four point five per cent had values below 160/90 mmHg. And sixty six point nine had values below 90 mmHg. Monthly medium cost per patient was 3242 pts. Monthly medium cost per patient well controlled was 12234 pts. CONCLUSIONS: Only a third of our patients are well controlled according the current standards. Efficiency decreases noteworthy when control levels are lower.