For hypertension and diabetes, lower treatment targets are not necessarily better

In a previous Medscape commentary, I criticized the 2017 American College of Cardiology / American Heart Association clinical practice guideline on high blood pressure in adults, which proposed lowering the threshold for hypertension from 140/90 to 130/80 mm Hg. Independently, the American Academy of Family Physicians and the American College of Physicians both declined to endorse this guideline, citing concerns about its methodology (e.g., no quality assessment for included studies), management of intellectual conflicts of interest, and lack of information on harms of intensive drug therapy.

The March 15th issue of American Family Physician included a Practice Guideline summary and an editorial perspective on the ACC/AHA guideline by Dr. Michael LeFevre, a member of the panel that developed the JNC 8 guideline for hypertension in adults. In his editorial, Dr. LeFevre pointed out that the guideline's strengths include its emphasis on proper blood pressure measurement technique to avoid overtreating adults with normal out-of-office blood pressures. On the other hand, he argued that "it is an overreach" to classify everyone with a blood pressure above 130/80 as having uncontrolled hypertension. He predicted that since intensive behavioral counseling has only modest benefits in lowering blood pressure, many patients at low risk of cardiovascular disease will end up being treated with medication:

Much harm will come if this change [to the definition of hypertension] is widely accepted and implemented, particularly if quality measures that echo this definition are put into place. Harms from the consequences of poor measurement, overmedication, and arbitrary quality measures can easily offset the small reduction in CVD events found in trials of high-risk persons.

Blood pressure is not the only area of family medicine where there is ongoing debate about appropriate treatment thresholds. In a recent clinical guidance statement, the American College of Physicians recommended that clinicians "aim to achieve an HbA1c level between 7% and 8% in most patients with type 2 diabetes," and "consider deintensifying pharmacologic therapy in patients with type 2 diabetes who achieve HbA1c levels less than 6.5%." This statement elicited a critical response from the American Diabetes Association and endocrinology groups, who argued that lower blood glucose targets are sometimes appropriate to reduce the risk of microvascular and perhaps cardiovacular complications.

This debate between lower and higher A1c targets has been ongoing for years, as illustrated by a pair of Pro and Con editorials on this topic that appeared in AFP in 2012. On the whole, however, more relaxed glucose control can have substantial benefits, especially for older persons with type 2 diabetes, as Dr. Allen Shaughnessy and colleagues argued in 2015:

A large part of the acceptance that “lower is better” hinges on a false belief that a pathophysiologic approach to decision making is always correct. It seems logical that reducing blood glucose levels to nondiabetic normal, no matter the risk or cost, should result in improved patient outcomes. But it doesn't. Today, an older patient with type 2 diabetes is more likely to be hospitalized for severe hypoglycemia than for hyperglycemia.

Underlining this point, a vignette-based study in the March/April issue of Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine found that primary care clinicians (particularly internists and nurse practitioners) would often chose to intensify glycemic control in an older adult with a HbA1c level of 7.5% and multiple life-limiting comorbidities. As family physicians look for opportunities to improve care for patients with hypertension and diabetes, we should not miss opportunities to avoid harm.

**

A slightly different version of this post first appeared on the AFP Community Blog.

Family physicians are underdogs among medical specialties

I only pay attention to college basketball during the first week of the NCAA tournament. Like many March Madness fans, I love rooting for underdogs. When the UMBC Retrievers became the first men's #16 seed to knock off overall #1 seed Virginia last week, I was in heaven. It broke my heart in 2016 when the upstart #14 seeded Stephen F. Austin Lumberjacks fell to Notre Dame in the second round on a last-second tip-in, a heartbeat from crashing the Sweet 16. In past tournaments, I was captivated by #11 seed George Mason's run to the Final Four in 2006 and #11 seed VCU's similar run from the First Four to the Final Four in 2011.

Family physicians are underdogs among medical specialties. If one were to rank student interest in the 24 specialties represented by the certifying boards of the American Board of Medical Specialties, the ROAD specialties (Radiology, Ophthalmology, Anesthesiology, Dermatology) would likely be #1 seeds, while Family Medicine, with its lower relative pay and more challenging work-life balance, would probably be seeded somewhere in the bottom half. Although the American Academy of Family Physicians cheered the results of last week's Residency Match, which saw another modest uptick in the number of U.S. medical students matching into Family Medicine residency programs, I have observed in a Medscape commentary that student interest in primary care is no "Match" for higher-income specialties. My own institution sent just 7 students out of a class of 200 into Family Medicine this year; nearly 3 times as many students matched into Orthopedic Surgery programs. It's no wonder that urgent cares, retail clinics, and telemedicine are thriving in the frontline health care void created by a growing shortage of primary care physicians.

What can medical educators do to increase student interest in primary care careers? Here's what I suggested in my commentary:

Early primary care exposure and required clerkships are necessary but not sufficient. ... Medical schools also need to "create a school culture that values primary care." That means advocating for excellence and innovation in primary care must be an explicit school goal, along with seizing every opportunity to discuss the foundational role of primary care in courses on health systems, and offering primary care tracks for selected students. Similarly, the Family Medicine for America's Health leadership team recommended creating longitudinal, integrated curricula in family medicine that allow students to make meaningful contributions to patient-centered care teams and have plenty of opportunities for faculty mentorship.

Embracing these strategies doesn't mean that family physicians won't continue to be viewed as the underdogs at tertiary academic medical centers where medical students receive the majority of their training, but it may give us more of a fighting chance to recruit students to our specialty before next year's medical version of March Madness.

**

This is an updated version of a post that originally appeared on Common Sense Family Doctor on March 23, 2016.

Public health and advocacy resources for family physicians

Shaping local and national policies to improve patients' health outcomes is an appropriate and important role for family physicians. For the past several years, I have taught public health and advocacy skills to medical students, and last month, I attended Academy Health's National Health Policy conference in Washington, DC, for the first time. Although the majority of participants were researchers or policy analysts, family physicians were well-represented as medical directors, public health and insurance officials, and leaders of privately funded community health improvement projects.

In a previous blog post, I discussed the concept of assessing social determinants of health through "community vital signs," geocoded and individually linked data derived from public data sources. Although American Family Physician focuses on health interventions that clinicians provide in offices, emergency rooms, hospitals, and long-term care facilities, it also publishes resources to help family physicians improve social determinants outside of health care settings. For example, a 2014 editorial examined the role of the family physician in preventing and managing adverse childhood experiences, and a review article in the February 1 issue discussed implications for physicians of childhood bullying.

Previous editorials and articles have addressed environmental health hazards such as lead, radon, air pollution and climate change, and a 2011 Letter to the Editor urged family physicians to take action to affect the built environment of American communities by "working to ensure that our patients have safe, convenient, and enjoyable places to walk, run, and bike." Other public health issues where physician advocacy can make a positive difference include food insecurity, homelessness, and firearm safety.

Family physicians are often first responders to natural and unnatural disasters in their communities. From influenza pandemics to bioterrorism, preparedness and early recognition is essential to protecting our patients. A 2015 editorial by my Georgetown colleague, Dr. Ranit Mishori, argued that the rapid spread of infectious diseases and migration and displacement of diverse populations have made global health knowledge essential for every family physician, regardless of location: "As the recent Ebola epidemic demonstrated, the world is not only smaller than ever, but it is also more intricately connected. Exotic diseases once confined to the third or developing world are now everyone's concern. Global has truly become local." For example, clinicians are likely to encounter victims of sex trafficking and labor trafficking in their practices.

AFP's sister publication, FPM, also provides resources for primary care clinicians with community and public health roles, from launching a community-wide flu vaccination plan, to following the Grand Junction, Colorado example of improving health system cost and quality outcomes, to working with community-based senior organizations. Finally, family medicine advocates can stay abreast of national initiatives that will shape the specialty's future, such as direct primary care, the patient-centered medical home, and the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act (MACRA).

**

This post first appeared on the AFP Community Blog.

Once again, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality stands in the line of fire

For the past 30 years, a little-known U.S. health agency has supported and produced volumes of groundbreaking research on how to make health care safer, less wasteful, and more effective. Dubbed "the little federal agency that could," AHRQ has accomplished this feat with a small fraction of the budgets of its higher-profile cousins, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health. Nonetheless, its work has often been politically unpopular and unheralded outside of a small community of health services researchers and patient advocates. Sadly, when all medical waste is somebody's income, there is little enthusiasm in the medical-industrial complex or on Capitol Hill in allocating the $3 trillion the U.S. spends on health care more wisely or efficiently. In fact, our legislative and executive branches have periodically proposed that AHRQ's budget be slashed or eliminated entirely.

In 1994, the agency (then known as the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research) dared to publish a back pain guideline that suggested that there was little role for surgery in most patients. As later documented in Health Affairs, this act raised the hackles of back surgeons with powerful allies in Congress who were already annoyed by the agency's association with the failed Clinton health reform plan. The agency's budget was zeroed out by the House of Representatives and narrowly restored by the Senate in 1995 after a 21 percent cut and a name change to emphasize that its mission would be to produce evidence to inform policy, rather than attempt to actively shape policy.

Despite this deliberately circumscribed mandate (I lost count of the number of times during my tenure as an AHRQ medical officer from 2006-2010 that I was told, "We don't make guidelines. We make evidence that other groups use to make guidelines"), the passage of the Affordable Care Act made AHRQ a target again in 2012, when a House appropriations subcommittee voted to zero out its budget again. AHRQ survived that episode, only to be zeroed out by the House once again in 2015, when the danger to the agency's survival seemed real enough that former Senate majority leader Bill Frist and former CMS director Gail Wilensky both penned op-eds urging their Republican colleagues to reconsider - which they eventually did.

Ironically, the need for AHRQ's work has never been greater. The proliferation of clinical practice guidelines of varying quality and conflicting recommendations has led to calls to systematically evaluate guidelines for their impact on patient outcomes. AHRQ would be a natural place for this evaluation to occur, as its National Guideline Clearinghouse already summarizes and synthesizes guidelines that meet certain evidence-based development criteria. But funding to maintain the NGC will run out a little more than 4 months from now, and there seems to be little hope of rescue.

In the meantime, the Trump Administration has proposed dissolving AHRQ as an independent agency in the next fiscal year and transferring its current functions into a new institute within the NIH, with a 21 percent budget cut from 2017. Although such an arrangement has both potential pros and cons, as a previous AHRQ director observed, it's hard to imagine that the shrunken agency would not be marginalized and lost amid NIH's biomedical research behemoth.

Why do I care? Why should you? You need not be ill enough to be hospitalized or care about practice guidelines to suffer if AHRQ is eliminated for good. Not only does it produce several important tools and resources for primary care practice, but it disseminates and implements evidence about what works to improve health, through its National Center for Excellence in Primary Care Research. AHRQ supports research that generates evidence about "effective models of care, patient- and family-centered care, shared decision making, quality improvement, and health information technology." This is research and evidence that no one, healthy or ill, can afford to lose. Academy Health maintains an advocacy toolkit for use by any person or organization who wants to help #SaveAHRQ from becoming a casualty of ignorance, indifference, and/or conflicts of interest. I hope that I have persuaded you to join the fight.

Does a rising tide of health outcomes lift all boats?

Politicians who favor reducing taxes and other financial policies that predominantly benefit "the rich" have argued that wealthy people have an outsized influence on the general health of the economy, and that their prosperity will benefit lower earners by directly or indirectly creating new or higher-paying jobs. A more pithy expression for this sentiment that President Kennedy first made famous is: "a rising tide lifts all boats." I don't have the expertise to comment on the veracity of this statement in an economic sense, but a 2016 study in Preventing Chronic Disease by Dr. David Kindig and colleagues asked an analogous question: can states simultaneously improve health outcomes and reduce health outcome disparities?

The study authors used age-adjusted mortality data from a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention database to compare the annual percent change in combined black and non-Hispanic white mortality by state with the annual change in black-white mortality disparities in those states from 1999 through 2013. Overall, in states where sufficient mortality data was available for analysis, combined-race mortality fell by a mean of 1.1% and the black-white disparity fell by a mean of 3.6% per year. However, there was no relationship between combined mortality and racial disparity reductions across states. A few states (Georgia, Maryland, Massachusetts) experienced above average improvements on both measures, but others (Oklahoma) were below average on both, and most states experienced relatively greater improvement on one measure than on the other.

Figure courtesy of CDC.

The implications of these findings are that strategies to improve health across all populations (the "rising tide") may be different from those aimed at eliminating racial health disparities ("all boats"). They also provide a baseline for what state health departments may reasonably expect when setting health improvement and disparity reduction goals in future years.

**

This post first appeared on Common Sense Family Doctor on October 6, 2016.