The Comparative Evaluation for the Sustainable Management of Hypertension and Diabetes in Korea Using an Analytic Hierarchy Process

The purpose of this study aimed to propose new evaluation criteria and an analytic hierarchy process (AHP) model to assess the sustainable management of hypertension and diabetes and to investigate the perception on two alternative health care priorities. One of the alternative priorities is that the treatment compliance of hypertension and diabetes patients would improve and the other of them is that the healthcare system for the continuity of care would strengthen. Our study design to evaluate the sustainable management of hypertension and diabetes was developed using brainstorming, Delphi techniques, and the AHP model. We first used the brainstorming and Delphi techniques, as well as literature review, to determine 50 criteria with which to evaluate the national non-communicable diseases policy; we then proposed a hierarchical structure of the AHP model. By applying the proposed AHP model to the assessment of the sustainable management of hypertension and diabetes in Korea, we show that the improvement of treatment compliance of patients should be relatively important rather than the healthcare system strengthening.