• Sang Ah Lee, Hyeki Park, Woorim Kim, Sun Ok Song, Hyunsun Lim, and Sung-Youn Chun.
• BigData Strategy Department, National Health Insurance Service, Wonju, Korea.
• J. Korean Med. Sci. 2022 Aug 8; 37 (31): e243e243.

BackgroundA chronic disease management program was implemented in April 2012 to lower out-of-pocket costs for repeat visits to the same clinic. The aim of this study was to investigate the association between participating in this program and the onset of complications among patients with hypertension using whole-nation claims data.MethodsWe used National Health Insurance Service data (2011-2018) and patients with newly detected hypertension from 2012 to 2014 were selected. Chronic disease management program reduces the out-of-pocket expenses of consultation fee from 30% to 20% when patients enroll in this program by agreeing to visit the same clinic for the treatment of hypertension or diabetes. As the dependent variable, acute myocardial infarction (MI), stroke, chronic kidney disease (CKD), and heart failure (HF) were selected. For analysis, cox proportional hazards model was used.ResultsTotal participants were 827,577, among which 102,831(12.6%) subjects participated in the chronic disease management. Participants of the chronic disease management program were more likely to show lower hazard ratios (HRs) than those of non-participants in terms of all complications (MI: HR, 0.75; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.68-0.82; stroke: HR, 0.75; 95% CI, 0.72-0.78; CKD: HR, 0.90; 95% CI, 0.85-0.96; HF: HR, 0.56; 95% CI, 0.52-0.61).ConclusionThe results showed that participants of the chronic disease management program were less likely to have hypertension complications compared to non-participants. Enhancing the participation rate may be related to better outcomes and reducing medical expenses among patients with chronic diseases.© 2022 The Korean Academy of Medical Sciences.

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