Missed Opportunities for Hypertension Screening of Older People in the Philippines: Cross-sectional Analysis of Nationally Representative Individual-level Data

Background: Guidelines recommend routine blood pressure measurement at health facilities. We estimated the potential for opportunistic screening for hypertension at health facilities to change the level and distribution of diagnosed hypertension in the older population of the Philippines.

Methods: We used a representative, nationwide sample of Filipinos aged 60 years and older and classified respondents as a) if they had high (≥140/90 mm Hg) blood pressure (BP) or were taking BP medication, b) if told have high BP by a doctor, and c) a if they were hypertensive, undiagnosed and had an outpatient visit to a health facility in the past 12 months. We assumed c) would be diagnosed if health facilities operated opportunistic screening. We estimated percentages of hypertensives diagnosed and with a missed opportunity overall, by wealth quintile and covariates, with age-sex and, then, full adjustment.

Findings: We estimated that opportunistic screening at health facilities would increase the percentage of hypertensives diagnosed from 62.7% (95% CI: 58.2, 67.0) to 74.4% (95% CI: 70.9, 77.6). The increase would be larger in richer groups due to lower (private) healthcare utilization by poorer, undiagnosed hypertensives.

Interpretation: Opportunistic screening for hypertension, if effectively implemented at health facilities, would substantially increase diagnosis but exacerbate inequality unless barriers discouraging poorer, older Filipinos from accessing outpatient and primary care were lowered.

Funding: Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia, Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation/Swiss National Science Foundation grant 400640_160374.