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A Cluster Randomized Trial to Assess the Impact of Opinion Leader Endorsed Evidence Summaries on Improving Quality of Prescribing for Patients With Chronic Cardiovascular Disease

NCT00175279 · Status: COMPLETED · Phase: NA · Type: INTERVENTIONAL · Enrollment: 160

Last updated 2011-05-10

No results posted yet for this study

Summary

BACKGROUND: Although much has been written about the influence of local opinion leaders on clinical practice, there have been few controlled studies of their effect, and almost none have attempted to change prescribing in the community for chronic conditions such as congestive heart failure (CHF) or ischemic heart disease (IHD). These two conditions are common and there is very good evidence about how to best prevent morbidity and mortality - and very good evidence that quality of care is, in general, suboptimal. Practice audits have demonstrated that about half of eligible CHF patients are prescribed ACE inhibitors (and fewer still reaching appropriate target doses) and less than one-third of patients with established IHD are prescribed statins (with many fewer reaching recommended cholesterol targets). It is apparent that interventions to improve quality of prescribing are urgently needed.

HYPOTHESIS: An intervention that consists of patient-specific one-page evidence summaries, generated and then endorsed by local opinion leaders, will be able to change prescribing practices of community-based primary care physicians.

DESIGN: A single centre randomized controlled trial comparing an opinion leader intervention to usual care. Based on random allocation of all physicians in one large Canadian health region, patients with CHF or IHD (not receiving ACE inhibitors or statins, respectively) recruited from community pharmacies will be allocated to intervention or usual care. The primary outcome is improvement in prescription of proven efficacious therapies for CHF (ACE inhibitors) or IHD (statins) within 6 months of the intervention.

Conditions

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Opinion leader generated and endorsed evidence summaries

Sponsors & Collaborators

  • Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research

    collaborator OTHER

  • Institute of Health Economics, Canada

    collaborator OTHER

  • University of Alberta

    lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

  • Sumit R Majumdar, MD, MPH · University of Alberta

Study Design

Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Purpose
TREATMENT
Masking
SINGLE
Model
PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age
50 Years
Sex
ALL
Healthy Volunteers
No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start
2002-01-31
Completion
2005-04-30

Countries

  • Canada

Study Locations

More Related Trials

Entities

Diseases

Read the full study record

This page highlights key information. For complete eligibility criteria, study locations, investigator contacts, and the full protocol, visit the original record on ClinicalTrials.gov.

View NCT00175279 on ClinicalTrials.gov