Mobile clinic in Massachusetts associated with cost savings from lowering blood pressure and emergency department use.

ABSTRACT: Mobile health clinics are in increasingly wide use, but evidence of their clinical impact or cost-effectiveness is limited. Using a unique data set of 5,900 patients who made a total of 10,509 visits in 2010-12 to the Family Van, an urban mobile health clinic in Massachusetts, we examined the effect of screenings and counseling provided by the clinic on blood pressure. Patients who presented with high blood pressure during their initial visit experienced average reductions of 10.7 mmHg and 6.2 mmHg in systolic and diastolic blood pressure, respectively, during their follow-up visits. These changes were associated with 32.2 percent and 44.6 percent reductions in the relative risk of myocardial infarction and stroke, respectively, which we converted into savings using estimates of the incide

SUBMITTER: Song Z 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3991926 | biostudies-literature | 2013 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature