Continuing on the case for connecting Californians, here is a look at the direct costs of hypertension (high blood pressure). There are several sources for cost data, the sources I used here typically rely on the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS). The references are below.

The first chart shows things from a societal perspective, for California residents, the cost per person reporting the condition. It does not include costs for people who do not report the condition.

The second chart shows things from an employer’s perspective, and is calculated differently - it is the total cost of the condition spread across the entire employee base, per year. On this one, you’ll note that the prevalence of hypertension makes it formidable from an employer’s perspective relative to the other chronic conditions.

There’s a whole lot more to be said about this, but I’ll keep it brief and open things up for comments.

Additional cost estimate (not charted): $US 1,131 direct medical expenditures, prescriptions &gt 50 % of expenditures

Next, a profile of indirect costs.

Sources (Zotero format):

First Chart

1. An Unhealthy America: The Economic Burden of Chronic Disease: California. Take a look at the methodology here.

Second Chart

2. Goetzel, Ron Z, Stacey R Long, Ronald J Ozminkowski, Kevin Hawkins, Shaohung Wang, and Wendy Lynch. “Health, absence, disability, and presenteeism cost estimates of certain physical and mental health conditions affecting U.S. employers.” Journal of occupational and environmental medicine / American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine 46, no. 4 (April 2004): 398-412.

Additional Estimate

3. Balu, Sanjeev, and Joseph Thomas. “Incremental expenditure of treating hypertension in the United States.” American journal of hypertension : journal of the American Society of Hypertension 19, no. 8 (August 2006): 810-6.

I was fortunate to reconnect with Chris Nohrden, of IBM and Joe Grundy, of ERIC, who are staffing the Center for eHealth Information Exchange and Adoption, part of the Patient-Centered Primary Care Collaborative.

With the backing of the collaborative and the physicians represented, The Center has the potential to continue to shape HIT efforts in the direction of patient centered care, with the assistance of members who have successfully implemented HIT systems. I am currently participating with the work of the Center with that goal in mind. Based on the innovation I have been seeing, I think this is a realistic expectation!