Abstract
The objectives of this study were to evaluate patients' attitudes towards hypertension treatment according to the chronic care model and to assess the implementation of hypertension clinical guidelines in family medicine. The cross-sectional study was carried out in two randomly selected primary health care centers (Bijeljina and Prijedor), respectively in Bosnia and Herzegovina, covering the period between March and April 2016. This study sample consists of 791 respondents with hypertension purposing to measure specific actions and quality of care for hypertensive patients. The Patient Assessment of Chronic Illness Care (PACIC) was used. Treatment for the indicators of hypertension was assessed by analyzing patients' medical charts according to the recommendations of clinical guidelines. More than half of the evaluated indicators of treatment for hypertension were documented in medical charts of 84.07% patients. The average overall PACIC score was 4.18 (SD 0.59), being an average of the separate scores of 4.19 (SD 0.57) in men and 4.17 (SD 0.60) in women. Subscale means of PACIC were as follows: patient activation 4.33, delivery system design 4.36; goal setting 4.03; problem solving 4.51; follow-up and co-ordination 3.67. No statistically significant correlations in the overall score and subscale scores were found by demographic characteristics. Non-smokers had a significantly higher overall score compared to smokers (p = 0.001). As implementation of the guidelines became stronger, the reported PACIC scores rose. Continuing the education of patients in order to achieve better health care outcomes is imperative.