[Experiences of family physicians participating in the first governmental financed health screening program in Hungary]

Abstract

In 2005 the Hungarian National Health Insurance Fund offered a screening program for family physicians among their patients, focusing mainly on cardiovascular risks. Within the close deadline the applications of 350 from the 6500 family physicians in practice were accepted.

Patients and methods: Three general practitioners from a suburb of Budapest are presenting their experiences obtained from the cohort of patients aged 35-50 years who are rarely visiting the surgery.

Results: The data of laboratory tests and anthropometric measurements were analyzed with special software, developed for this screening program. Among their 1076 patients 60 patients with (pre)diabetes, 270 with lipid disorders (181 with hypertrigliceridemia and 79 with hypercholesterolemia) and 50 with hypertension were found, including overlaps. Twenty three percent of the study population smoked and 49% of them were overweight (BMI >25 kg/m(2)). According to the calculations of the software 42% of them had low, 1% had medium and 44% had high global cardiovascular risk. Comparing the ratio of patients who accepted the prescribed therapy and reached the recommended target levels, the following ratio (in percents) were registered: diabetes (87/56), hypertension (95/57), dyslipidemia (56/16).

Conclusions: It seems that recommendations for treatment of diabetes and hypertension are more frequently accepted by patients, than that of dyslipidemia. The doctors offered treatment less frequently for their patients with dyslipidemia, perhaps because of the low recommended lipid target levels. After a short overview of the program, the experiences were analyzed in the following points of view: economical, organizational, professional, informatics, epidemiological and that of patients and family physicians.