Hypertension management: relationship between visit interval and control.

Objective: Hypertension is one of the most common diagnoses resulting in an office visit to the physician. We examined the relationship between the variation in the interval between follow-up visits for hypertensive patients and the control of blood pressure.

Methods: The sample consisted of 113 patients who made 399 visits. Data included current medical problems, medications, type of health insurance, and socioeconomic status for each patient.

Results: The mean number of days between visits was 70.6 with a standard deviation of 76.3. No significant relationship was found between visit interval and severity of hypertension (p = 0.14). Sample size made it possible to detect a 20% difference with a likelihood of 0.80 at a significance level of 0.05.

Conclusions: Our findings are limited by our focus on patient behavior rather than physician recommendation concerning the interval between visits, and by the distinct possibility that many of the visits were made for reasons other than follow-up of hypertension.