ArticleBMJ public health2025
Effects of medication procurement reforms and extended prescription duration on medication coverage for hypertension in India's public health system: a modelling study.
Article in BMJ public health, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
2 citing papers in PubMed.
- Scaling integrated cardiovascular-kidney-metabolic care through primary health care in the Americas: a health policy analysis of HEARTS 2.0 implementation levers and architecture.Lancet regional health. Americas · 2026Review
- WHF Roadmap on Single Pill Combination Therapies.Global heart · 2025Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Objectives: To estimate the effects of procurement reforms and extended prescription duration on medication coverage for hypertension in India's public health system. Design: Simulation study incorporating data from governmental medication price lists, prescription pattern analyses, and market sales surveys. Setting: Simulated hypothetical public healthcare facility in India treating 1000 patients with hypertension. Participants: Patients with medication-treated hypertension. Interventions: (1) Focused procurement by reducing antihypertensive medication classes from 5 to 3 and selecting one medication within class; (2) Increased use of single-pill combinations (SPC) and (3) Only SPC dispensation. The base scenario consisted of procurement of multiple medications across classes, 1-month prescription duration and no use of SPC. We repeated all scenarios with extended prescription duration (3 months vs 1 month). Main outcome measures: Medication coverage is defined as the maximum number of patients with adequate medication without exceeding the base scenario budget. Results: With 1-month prescriptions, focused procurement alone was estimated to increase medication coverage by 17.8% (95% uncertainty interval: 16.2%; 19.6%) compared with the base scenario. Medication coverage improved by 3.6% (2.8%; 4.4%) with increased SPC use and by 10.3% (8.3%; 12.3%) with only SPC dispensation. Combining focused procurement and increased SPC use increased medication coverage by 20.2% (18.3%; 22.1%). When the prescription duration was extended to 3 months, the medication coverage was further increased by ~40% (eg, net improvement of ~60% with focused procurement, increased SPC use and 3-month prescriptions vs the base scenario). Conclusions: With a fixed budget for medication procurement and dispensation, the combination of focused procurement, increased SPC use and extended prescription periods could substantially increase the number of patients who receive hypertension medications in India's public health system. Our study highlights the benefits of implementing these reforms to scale up medication coverage for hypertension in India and potentially elsewhere.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.