Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://hdl.handle.net/1893/23153
Appears in Collections:Faculty of Health Sciences and Sport Journal Articles
Peer Review Status: Refereed
Title: Safer Prescribing — A Trial of Education, Informatics, and Financial Incentives
Author(s): Dreischulte, Tobias
Donnan, Peter T
Grant, Aileen
Hapca, Adrian
McCowan, Colin
Guthrie, Bruce
Contact Email: aileen.grant@stir.ac.uk
Issue Date: 17-Mar-2016
Date Deposited: 25-Apr-2016
Citation: Dreischulte T, Donnan PT, Grant A, Hapca A, McCowan C & Guthrie B (2016) Safer Prescribing — A Trial of Education, Informatics, and Financial Incentives. New England Journal of Medicine, 374 (11), pp. 1053-1063. https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMsa1508955
Abstract: BACKGROUND High-risk prescribing and preventable drug-related complications are common in primary care. We evaluated whether the rates of high-risk prescribing by primary care clinicians and the related clinical outcomes would be reduced by a complex intervention.  METHODS In this cluster-randomized, stepped-wedge trial conducted in Tayside, Scotland, we randomly assigned participating primary care practices to various start dates for a 48-week intervention comprising professional education, informatics to facilitate review, and financial incentives for practices to review patients’ charts to assess appropriateness. The primary outcome was patient-level exposure to any of nine measures of high-risk prescribing of nonsteroidal antiinflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) or selected antiplatelet agents (e.g., NSAID prescription in a patient with chronic kidney disease or coprescription of an NSAID and an oral anticoagulant without gastroprotection). Prespecified secondary outcomes included the incidence of related hospital admissions. Analyses were performed according to the intention-to-treat principle, with the use of mixed-effect models to account for clustering in the data.  RESULTS A total of 34 practices underwent randomization, 33 of which completed the study. Data were analyzed for 33,334 patients at risk at one or more points in the preintervention period and for 33,060 at risk at one or more points in the intervention period. Targeted high-risk prescribing was significantly reduced, from a rate of 3.7% (1102 of 29,537 patients at risk) immediately before the intervention to 2.2% (674 of 30,187) at the end of the intervention (adjusted odds ratio, 0.63; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.57 to 0.68; P<0.001). The rate of hospital admissions for gastrointestinal ulcer or bleeding was significantly reduced from the preintervention period to the intervention period (from 55.7 to 37.0 admissions per 10,000 person-years; rate ratio, 0.66; 95% CI, 0.51 to 0.86; P=0.002), as was the rate of admissions for heart failure (from 707.7 to 513.5 admissions per 10,000 person-years; rate ratio, 0.73; 95% CI, 0.56 to 0.95; P=0.02), but admissions for acute kidney injury were not (101.9 and 86.0 admissions per 10,000 person-years, respectively; rate ratio, 0.84; 95% CI, 0.68 to 1.09; P=0.19).  CONCLUSIONS A complex intervention combining professional education, informatics, and financial incentives reduced the rate of high-risk prescribing of antiplatelet medications and NSAIDs and may have improved clinical outcomes. (Funded by the Scottish Government Chief Scientist Office; ClinicalTrials.gov number,NCT01425502.)
DOI Link: 10.1056/NEJMsa1508955
Rights: This item has been embargoed for a period. During the embargo please use the Request a Copy feature at the foot of the Repository record to request a copy directly from the author. You can only request a copy if you wish to use this work for your own research or private study. Publisher policy allows this work to be made available in this repository. Published in N Engl J Med 2016; 374:1053-1064March 17, 2016DOI: 10.1056/NEJMsa1508955 by Massachusetts Medical Society. The original publication is available at: http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsa1508955

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