The Mayo three-community hypertension control program. V. Cost-effectiveness of intervention.

This paper compares the costs of a categorical clinic model for community hypertension intervention with the costs of two less resource-intensive hypertension programs. Three categories of costs are measured for each program: program costs, patient costs, and time costs. Total costs are expressed in terms of costs per hypertensive patient controlled under each program. When adjusted for differences in hypertension prevalence and screening costs in the three community programs, the cost-effectiveness of the categorical clinic model is questionable. These results suggest that careful analyses of the categorical clinic model in other communities should be conducted before public resources are committed to the establishment of such models on a widespread basis.