Barriers to optimal hypertension control

Abstract

There is an obvious gap in the translation of clinical trial evidence into practice with regards to optimal hypertension control. The three major categories of barriers to BP control are patient-related, physician-related, and medical environment/health care system factors. Patient-related barriers include poor medication adherence, beliefs about hypertension and its treatment, depression, health literacy, comorbidity, and patient motivation. The most pertinent is medication adherence, given its centrality to the other factors. The most salient physician-related barrier is clinical inertia--defined, as the failure of health care providers to initiate or intensify drug therapy in a patient with uncontrolled BP. The major reasons for clinical inertia are: 1) overestimation of the amount of care that physicians provide; 2) lack of training on how to attain target BP levels; and 3) clinicians' use of soft reasons to avoid treatment intensification by adopting a "wait until next visit" approach in response to patients' excuses.