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Sponsors and Collaborators: |
Harvard Pilgrim Health Care State of Oregon |
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Information provided by: | Harvard Pilgrim Health Care |
ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: | NCT00788346 |
Prescribing decisions by clinicians are often thought to be simple: a patient's clinical problem leads a prescriber to choose the optimal treatment. However, many factors other than the patient's condition affect prescribing decisions, including the marketing of pharmaceuticals. Clinicians are subjected to direct "detailing" by representatives of the pharmaceutical industry, advertisements in medical journals and requests for specific treatments from patients, who are increasingly exposed to direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising. These influences, often based on biased or inaccurate information, contribute to a variety of problems in prescribing, including the unnecessary use of expensive, heavily marketed medications.
Overcoming these influences requires innovative approaches. The movement toward widespread adoption of electronic health records (EHRs) and electronic prescribing presents new opportunities to educate both clinicians and patients at the time of medication prescribing. This project, endorsed by the AHRQ-supported Centers for Education and Research on Therapeutics (CERTs; www.certs.hhs.gov) and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), aims to test the effectiveness of computerized prescribing alerts and state-of-the-art educational outreach to reduce the unnecessary use of heavily marketed medications. A second goal is to improve clinicians' knowledge of industry marketing practices, so that they can more effectively assess information provided by drug companies. Thus, the study has two specific aims:
Specific Aim 1: To assess whether computerized prescribing alerts linked electronically to patient educational material can reduce prescribing of heavily marketed medications.
Specific Aim 2: To assess whether group academic detailing increases clinicians' knowledge about industry marketing practices and increases the effect of prescribing alerts.
Condition | Intervention |
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Use of Sleep Medications |
Behavioral: Computerized alerts Behavioral: Alerts Plus Detailing |
Study Type: | Interventional |
Study Design: | Health Services Research, Randomized, Open Label, Parallel Assignment |
Official Title: | Reducing Unnecessary Use of Heavily Marketed Medicines: A Randomized Controlled Trial of Computerized Prescribing Alerts and Clinician Education |
Enrollment: | 257 |
Study Start Date: | March 2007 |
Study Completion Date: | March 2008 |
Primary Completion Date: | March 2008 (Final data collection date for primary outcome measure) |
Arms | Assigned Interventions |
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Computerized Alerts: Experimental
Computerized Clinical Decision Support to clinician at the time of prescribing
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Behavioral: Computerized alerts
Computerized Clinical Decision Support to clinician at the time of prescribing
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Alerts PLUS Detailing: Experimental
Computerized Clinical Decision Support to clinician at the time of prescribing PLUS one group academic detailing session
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Behavioral: Alerts Plus Detailing
Computerized Clinical Decision Support to clinician at the time of prescribing PLUS one group academic detailing session
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Usual Care: No Intervention
Usual Care
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Genders Eligible for Study: | Both |
Accepts Healthy Volunteers: | Yes |
Inclusion Criteria:
Exclusion Criteria:
United States, Massachusetts | |
Harvard Pilgrim Health Care | |
Boston, Massachusetts, United States, 02215 |
Principal Investigator: | Steven R Simon, MD | Harvard Medical School and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care |
Responsible Party: | Harvard Medical School and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care ( Steven R. Simon, MD (Principal Investigator) ) |
Study ID Numbers: | 5.12.05 |
Study First Received: | November 7, 2008 |
Last Updated: | November 7, 2008 |
ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: | NCT00788346 |
Health Authority: | United States: Institutional Review Board |
Heavily marketed medications Prescribing Health information technology Education |