Comparing secondary prevention for patients with coronary heart disease and stroke attending Australian general practices: a cross-sectional study using nationwide electronic database.

Objectives: To compare secondary prevention care for patients with coronary heart disease (CHD) and stroke, exploring particularly the influences due to frequency and regularity of primary care visits.

Setting: Secondary prevention for patients (≥18 years) in the National Prescription Service administrative electronic health record database collated from 458 Australian general practice sites across all states and territories.

Design: Retrospective cross-sectional and panel study. Patient and care-level characteristics were compared for differing CHD/stroke diagnoses. Associations between the type of cardiovascular diagnosis and medication prescription as well as risk factor assessment were examined using multivariable logistic regression.

Participants: Patients with three or more general practice encounters within 2 years of their latest visit during 2016-2020.

Outcome measures: Proportions and odds ratios (ORs) for (1) prescription of antihypertensives, antilipidaemics and antiplatelets and (2) assessment of blood pressure (BP) and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) in patients with stroke only compared against those with CHD only and those with both conditions.

Results: There were 111 892 patients with CHD only, 27 863 with stroke only and 9791 with both conditions. Relative to patients with CHD, patients with stroke were underprescribed antihypertensives (70.8% vs 82.8%), antilipidaemics (63.1% vs 78.7%) and antiplatelets (42.2% vs 45.7%). With sociodemographic factors, comorbidities and level of care considered as covariates, the odds of non-prescription of any recommended secondary prevention medications were higher in patients with stroke only (adjusted OR 1.37; 95% CI (1.31, 1.44)) compared with patients with CHD only. Patients with stroke only were also more likely to have neither BP nor LDL-C monitored (adjusted OR 1.26; 95% CI (1.18, 1.34)). Frequent and regular general practitioner encounters were independently associated with the prescription of secondary prevention medications (p<0.001).

Conclusions: Secondary prevention management is suboptimal in cardiovascular disease patients and worse post-stroke compared with post-CHD. More frequent and regular primary care encounters were associated with improved secondary prevention.